The Soulless VII (660 hits)
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Submitted by Anthony Locascio (View user info) at 2005-04-10 17:19:39 EDT
The traffic bogged them down, even at the early hour. The roads near the industrial parks and harbor of Davis Island were twisty and narrow, poorly lit, and crowded with the blue-collar hordes that worked the docks there in the stultifying Florida heat. The warehouse, a decaying structure of corrugated steel and rusty-framing, had been rented five years ago to a corporation, P&M holdings, a company with a CEO, COO, and chairman named John Glaim, a man who'd decided not too long before that he'd taken enough shit in his life. His specialty had varied over five years, from stolen cars, to a makeshift chop-shop at one point. From there had been the near-disaster of his venture into drug running, a fiasco that had ended with a lot of dead bodies and the loss of nearly eight months of work that had him day-in and day-out unsure if he would be alive to go to bed that night. He'd come out of it as clean as a whistle, with a commendation medal for his bravery. The irony had been rich. He, however, was not. His retirement, two million in cash in a metal briefcase, had been picked up as "evidence". And now this train wreck of a human being, Juan Padilla and the rest of the Cubans, they'd killed two guys and stolen a truck full of guns. He pulled the slide back on the Desert Eagle, watching the huge bullet nestle down into the bore. They pulled up to the warehouse door and honked once, very short. There might be more dead guys soon. Cubans could be replaced. Everybody could be replaced. Three long years remembering two million in a Samsonite suitcase had taught him that.
At the sound of the honk, the lefthand steel door began to roll back, pushed by one of Padilla's crew. They pulled in and just as quickly the door shut behind them. In the gritty morning light filtering through the windows lining the sides of the hangar-like building, they could see the truck parked dead center along the length of the structure. Luis pulled the car over to one side.
John took a moment to absorb the scene, then looked back to his partner. He'd met Luis two years ago as a newly crowned detective. He'd been the sort of "experienced" cop (you mean "old", lieutenant) that would be perfect to help the newest member of Tampa's homicide detectives learn the ropes. Luis had been a rare find, possessed of a wicked intelligence totally unsuited to the classroom but ideal for the street. He'd come up hard, the son of Cuban refugees. Hard enough to want more than he was getting, but not jaded enough to turn his gun on his "friend."
"Luis."
"Yeah?"
"Please tell me I'm not seeing what I think I'm seeing. I can't possibly be seeing it, so tell me that I'm right and I'm not."
"Sorry, you don't need glasses."
"Keep that gun handy. I may change my mind."
Luis nodded, and tucked the large weapon inside his jacket.
"Let's see if we can't fix this monumental fuckup without doing forty at Coleman Correctional."
The two got out of the car. The incredulous scene that had so baffled the two crooked detectives was even more bizarre outside of the protective shell of the car. The rear doors of the hijacked truck were open. Boxes and racks inside had been toppled over and were spilling out onto the dusty floor. John saw a stack of jumbled weapons that looked somewhat like shotguns, but had strange vents and grips on them that he'd never seen, even on police-issue riot arms. Several large jackets of some strange material coated with black metal plates also were in the pile. One of Padilla's crew had buckled one of the jackets on. On a person, it was readily identifiable as body armor. A single plate of glossy black metal like a cuirass covered the chest and abdomen with additional plates at the shoulder and a small steel lip that guarded the throat all the way to the chin. The creak of the material told John the backing was probably Kevlar. Another of the Cubans had managed to load the shotgun with a large drum magazine, one that undoubtedly could hold at least twelve good-sized shells. The two were laughing hysterically, nearly in tears from mirth. Padilla sat some ways away, idly picking his teeth with the butterfly knife that he always carried.
"Oh shit, they're here, here watch this," the Cuban with the shotgun stammered through his laughter, motioning to the two stymied onlookers. The one decked out in body armor stifled his laughter and stood up straight, his hands behind his back. John couldn't believe what he was seeing, his mouth hung open. Luis put his hand to his forehead in embarrassment, knowing what was coming.
"You watching?"
"I'm watching , asshole."
The report was a thundercrack, muzzle flare erupting from the barrel. The shell struck the Cuban in the chest, knocking him off his feet and sending him sliding across the floor in a screech of metal. The shooter laughed uproariously, his cohort coming to a stop almost twenty feet away. In what looked like some sort of a miracle, he got hesitantly to his feet, shook his head to clear it, and started laughing right along with the Cuban that had shot him.
"Is that not cooler than shit, amigos?" he cackled.
John strode quickly toward him. "Let me see that." He inspected the armor where the shot had hit. The plates had buckled ever so slightly, but there was no real damage. The armor could probably take six or seven more hits without much damage. "You know you could impact your heart that way and die, you idiot."
"Nah, I can barely feel it. Just the push."
"Next time try it without the vest."
"I wouldn't do that," he heard Luis say. John spun around to see the shooter rummaging around inside of several wooden crates stacked next to one of the truck's tires. He came out with another of the large drum magazines, sinister, black and round. Fumbling with the weapon, he disengaged the empty magazine and began to reload. "You'll kill him with those."
"Whadja mean? You saw what happened before."
Luis tapped the side of the crate. "These are sabot shells. They're armor piercing. Probably got a tungsten or depleted uranium core. It would go through light tank armor. "
The Cuban looked at Luis doubtfully, then at his partner, who was still laughing while an unamused John Glaim looked on with a sour expression. The box was clearly marked in three-inch black stenciled letters: AP ROUNDS - 12 GAUGE.
"Diego, put the fucking gun down," Padilla barked. "Get on the phone and make sure Allen finished with our two friends." The Cuban obediently ran to the office phone and started punching numbers.
"It's too damn early for this, Juan," John snapped, coming toward the shorter Cuban gang leader. Jose shrugged his heavily tattooed shoulders.
"Couldn't be helped."
"You're fucking-a. What'd you do with the drivers?"
"They're having breakfast with Allen. He'll drive them home when he's done."
Brian Allen was a foreman at a cement-mixing plant nearby. As a favor to the Cubans, he would occasionally cast some unfortunate in concrete and dump the slab in the gulf from his fishing trawler. John had made a conscious effort to avoid any knowledge of when or where those dumpings took place, but he figured with military-grade stolen weapons and body armor, two more dead guys couldn't complicate anything.
Killings always brought on a lot of heat, and he'd never personally been involved in one. He wasn't ready to start now.
John motioned to the stack of six boxes and the haphazard pile of guns. "Is this everything?" Jose nodded, picking his teeth with his knife. He was almost the same height as Luis, but shaved as bald as a bowling ball, with a goatee and mustache that made his face seem somewhat young for the leader of a gang into drugs, hijacking, and the occasional murder. It was hard to believe that he and Luis shared the same national blood. Both men were intelligent in their own way, but Luis had a deductive and inquisitive nature that elevated him. Jose's was more akin to a fox able to defeat a farmer's snares, little more than an animal. A well-fed alpha, but an animal nonetheless.
John shuffled over to the crates to examine the contents. The full heat of the day was kicking in, and the large overhead vent fans had been without power since he'd first rented the warehouse. He'd sweat through his golf shirt already. Even the minor eddies of fresh air did nothing to relieve him, only serving to bring fresh heat it seemed. He leaned on the edge of one of the crates for a moment. Luis took a step towards him. John waved him away, then started going through the crates.
"Oh good God, fuck," he breathed. One of the crates was filled with a criss-cross of wooden slats, and sitting in a neat little nest of polystyrene was an incendiary grenade. The thought of what Padilla's idiots would do if they'd found these before the guns made him shudder. Images of the entire warehouse going up in a flare of white-hot phosphorus filled his head, along with many, many questions from the arson unit and, eventually, the FBI. He replaced the cover on the crate.
Another crate contained two-dozen drums of the shotgun magazines, minus the one that Padilla's henchman had already emptied. The third held a similar number of the armor piercing shells. A fourth, larger than the others, held twelve helmets that looked almost like riot gear. Curious, John placed the helmet next to one of the suits of body armor. There was a notch in the back of the helmet that fit neatly onto a ridge of hardened plastic at the collar. They were obviously part of a set.
"Some sort of paramilitary group?" Luis asked. The other Cuban had returned from the office and was looking on with a bemused expression. John shrugged.
"Don't know any group that has firepower like this. Even counter-terrorism uses at best Mark III body armor. This stuff looks a generation ahead of that. You!" He pointed to the Cuban still wearing the body armor. He looked back dumbly. "How heavy is that stuff?"
He shrugged. "Maybe fifteen pounds. Maybe a little less."
John shook his head. "Heavy duty laminate body armor that weighs less than a full vest. It's got to cost a fortune."
"Now you're talking my language, amigo." Jose's interest had perked considerably. "What are we talking about dollar-ways?"
Luis shrugged. "Standard issue vests go for about twelve hundred, I think. Ceramic plates are another grand."
Jose cackled in delight. "And we got twelve. That's...." He hesitated.
"About twenty-six thousand," Luis finished. "Probably more."
"That don't even count the guns. I got a guy who would take all this for cash. We can unload them in a week,"
"No you won't," John said flatly. He put the lid back on the crate, glancing at the two unopened ones on the bottom. "You're going to call Allen right now. He's going to have a second breakfast with this stuff. You tell him that he'd better sail to the edge of the fucking world when he dumps it. "
"What are you doing, man, this is money!" Jose nearly shrieked. Nothing like plucking chickens in front of the fox.
"This is a death sentence, you moron. Whoever owns this stuff is powerful and rich, and secretive. When they find out it's gone, they're going to come looking for it. Whoever has it is a dead man,"
Jose sniffed. "The two weren't so tough."
"You surprised them. When they find out, they'll be very, very pissed. So make the call."
"Fuck you, essay. You ain't got the balls to deal with the merchandise, we'll unload it ourselves. You get nada."
"You're not going to do that. Make the call and take the truck over. Have it compacted over at Willard's."
"Diego and Gus will chop it up for parts," Jose differed. John took a deep breath, knowing what was coming, then stepped away from the crates and toward the cocky Cuban.
"Let me explain something to you, Juan," he began, punctuating with a backhanded slap that knocked Padilla backwards several steps. A moment later, John had the huge pistol in his hand, the bore at eye-level. Luis took his cue from his partner, pulling his own pistol and kicking the shotgun out of reach of the other Cuban, who quickly pulled a silver revolver from the waistband of his pants. The sight of Luis' pistol trained on his unarmored chest gave him a moment's pause though. He glanced to Jose, who was wiping a string of blood from his lip and spinning his knife in his other hand. His pistol lay on the stack of rotting wooden pallets he'd been sitting on, a good eight feet away and out of reach. He snarled in anger, a look that John would not have believed a human could produce.
"You'd better pull that trigger, homie. Otherwise, I'm gonna bury this knife in your gut, watch you squirm till you die. Your partner, too."
"You're not going to do a damn thing, and I'll tell you why. You can't kill me."
User Reviews
Submitted by BlazinBull (user info) at 2008-01-31 10:17:02 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by LadyJay (user info) at 2006-02-06 21:11:36 EST (#)
Ranking: -1
aaaahhh!!! what happened!! wheres the doctor and the specimen and "father"!!!???
I was really into it, then it just disappeared! man!
Submitted by Viper_04 (user info) at 2005-11-11 08:22:07 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
While i begrudge the fact that i'm missing metallica for this...I know it's worth it
Submitted by Brdn_Nkd (user info) at 2005-11-09 10:34:57 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by MyNameIsTim (user info) at 2005-05-02 15:24:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
OOOOOHHH SHIT! HE'S THE GUY! THAT GUY IS THE THING! fucking saweeet!!!!!
why can't this be done alre ady.
iam so excited about this series..this is why i read uber
Submitted by nrduncan (user info) at 2005-04-20 13:25:50 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
More more more please?
Pretty please?
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2005-04-12 10:53:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You're a fantastic writer. Imagery, dialogue, story, characterization, it's all gold, man.
Totally awesome.
Submitted by nrduncan (user info) at 2005-04-12 09:32:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
The only bad thing about this story is that the rest of it isn't up yet.
Submitted by Jack_McCallum (user info) at 2005-04-11 18:37:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
You know what makes a good break from work? Printing this shit out and reading it while having a smoke outside. It's the perfect thing.
This is getting better, and unlike a lot of beefheads who demand action all the time, I'm enjoying the buildup.
Submitted by Dannie (user info) at 2005-04-11 09:40:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by spedmonkey (user info) at 2005-04-10 23:29:29 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
My series pales greatly in comparison to you.
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2005-04-10 21:54:55 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
ooooh
Submitted by tlozoot (user info) at 2005-04-10 18:27:41 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
There should more demand for serial fiction from Ubermadness finalists.
Submitted by LadyPlural (user info) at 2005-04-10 17:47:13 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I have read these, and hot daaaaaaaamn, are they good.
Submitted by lordofthedance (user info) at 2005-04-10 17:46:31 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Good stuff.
Submitted by domenad (user info) at 2005-04-10 17:43:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
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Submitted by darko (user info) at 2005-04-10 17:28:43 (#)
Ranking: 2
I haven't read a single one of these yet, but when you are finished I'm going to save them all and put them onto my ipod and read them on there.
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You're certainly welcome to do that, darko, but this thing is going to be LONG. Might be quite awhile, as in months.
Submitted by darko (user info) at 2005-04-10 17:28:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I haven't read a single one of these yet, but when you are finished I'm going to save them all and put them onto my ipod and read them on there.