September 4, 2015
If you only stop for gas, you can get from Key West to New Orleans in about fifteen hours. It’s a little hard on the posterior, but you can get used to anything if you’ve got the proper motivation.
In this case, the motivation was running from angry bikers who were convinced we stole their drugs.
Still confused by that, I called Justin, thinking he might have some insight into the biker thought process.
“Oh, those guys,” he said. “I don’t know why they think their meth is with you. I burned it along with their place when I robbed them.”
Have I mentioned Justin is a criminal?
“So what am I supposed to do?” I asked.
“Stay off the roads.”
“Not an option. How did they find out about us, anyway?”
“One of the great strengths of organized crime: networking. A member of one of their satellite chapters probably recognized some of the serial numbers on the bills.”
“So…any time we spend cash, we should then quickly relocate?”
“Looks like it.”
So now we couldn’t even stay in hotels. And camping in the south during summer was also not an attractive option.
“Well, how about getting us the rest of the money you mentioned? If it's different money, that shouldn’t attract them.”
“Yeah, yeah, give me a couple days.”
“While you’re at it, maybe you could come up with something to work on Tirek. He shrugged off 5.56 the other day. Maybe a fifty-cal would do it.”
“I got something better and more portable, an old M203.”
“Where did you…never mind.”
“See you soon, Sandy.”
That was encouraging, but we had to get through the next few days first.
As we crossed the Florida panhandle, we passed by the Air Force Weapons Museum in Eglin. I remembered a visit I had made during a trip a few years ago. I had found a YGBSM patch in the gift shop. Good times.
That was about the only entertainment on the trip. After such a long piece of driving, all I wanted to do was find a sporting goods store, buy a tent, and go to sleep.
So of course, Tirek was in New Orleans and we had to go after him.
Luna picked him up from only a dozen miles away. It looked like his plan to lure us to Key West had almost worked. If we hadn’t realized it, successfully predicted where he would pop up next, and raced like crazy people to get there, we’d have missed him completely. To be so close when he finally did appear was a pure stroke of luck and we had to exploit it.
It was nice to have a little time to set up. If he would probably be in the area for a little while, we could canvas the place first and make a plan.
I thought about calling my friend the pilot. Maybe there would be some jets at the base south of New Orleans. But we were in a crowded city. Tirek had yet to be kind enough to appear somewhere empty and also open enough to get a laser designation on him.
I guess that still left the option of guys with guns, but figuring out how to contact them was still a problem. Going up to a base and saying, “Hey, we need you to shoot this guy for us,” could work, but seemed like it would take more time than we had. SOF guys might move fast, but they're still part of the glacier that is the government.
We could also go to the police, but they might start asking questions about drug money and fake license plates. Kind of backed ourselves into a hole with that one.
Locating Tirek's general location, we circled the block, careful to stay hidden in traffic. Luna carefully pinpointed which building he was inside.
Maria checked the guns and we pulled into the alley nearest the building. There was a convenient door and I stopped the car beside it, the three of us piling out.
Hiding behind the Fiat’s meager bulk, we went over a final few words of planning. When we were ready, we took our positions. Luna trotted around to the door and made ready. Standing to the side, I raised my carbine and braced.
Luna kicked the door off its hinges and got out of the way. I leaned around the frame, weapon pointed.
Tirek was in the room. I was pleased to see that there was a bandage, albeit a small one, on the shoulder where I’d apparently shot him. He knelt on the floor, his horns nearly brushing the ceiling. There was a table in front of him and on the other side were about twenty bikers. It looked like we’d interrupted a meeting.
Oh my. This was a very bad place to be named Sandy West.
Tirek looked surprised, so we’d done at least one thing right. I saw his expression start to change to rage, but I was already running for my life.
The Fiat doesn’t have much hood, but by God, I slid across it. As I was getting in the driver’s seat, I heard Maria’s 12-gauge go off, but didn’t bother to see what she was shooting at. Luna was already in the back.
The transmission took a shock as I dropped it into Drive with my foot already planted on the gas. Fortunately, there’s very few things weaker than the Fiat’s engine and nothing broke.
I glanced in the mirror and saw a garage door roll up, headlights of motorcycles shining from within. That was actually a relief. The kind of choppers your average motorcycle gang rides aren’t as good at taking corners as a car, much less a sport bike.
However, the motorcycles could cut through traffic with ease, and in a place like the crowded streets of New Orleans, that could make all the difference.
Maria had the atlas out, turned to the inset of New Orleans. It didn’t really help for details, but might keep us out of a dead end.
“South!” she directed.
“Which way is that?!”
“Next right!”
The road was narrow and riddled with potholes. We weren’t in a busy part of the city. I saw that we were coming to a t-road. There was a concrete wall directly ahead, with an open steel gate. I realized it was part of the levee system that was supposed to keep the city from flooding.
If there was a levee, then there was a river. I started to form a vague idea for a movie-esqe scenario where I would go through the gate and then turn sharply so the bikers would miss and ride into the water.
There was a set of railroad tracks directly on the other side of the gate, though, and the bumps of going over them set the car sideways onto a grassy embankment alongside the Mississippi.
In the mirror, I saw one motorcycle completely botch the railroad crossing and fall. The others took it more slowly and we gained ground.
We immediately lost it, though, when the railroad tracks merged with an industrial park for transloading the railcars with river barges. The pavement was a platform about two hundred feet wide and a quarter of a mile long. The powerful bikes started to catch up on the concrete.
Some trucks were parked here and there, and there was some sort of warehouse up ahead. The doors were open and I could see light all the way through. Well, if that’s the way it had to be. I kept the throttle pinned and zoomed into the building.
I could see a whole bunch of surprised dock workers handling various materials blurring by. It felt like doing a trench run on the Death Star. All I needed was a few seconds and we would be out.
More motorcycles were waiting in ambush on the other side of the building, and they’d timed the intercept so that they were a whole lot closer than the previous pack. I could hear unmuffled v-twin engines through the open hatch.
Open hatch! Oh yeah, we hadn’t had time to shut it. Luna was doing an admirable job of bracing back there, hooves spread and hanging on.
“Begone!” she shouted, grabbing something to throw. I realized it was my laptop as I saw it going sailing out the back and clobber a biker in the face. His bike went down and the others following piled in. It was a little like bowling and a little like a train wreck. We hadn’t gotten them all, but we’d bought some breathing room.
The loading dock was rapidly coming to an end as a canal from the river cut inland. I turned the wheel, seeing that the levee coming up was a grass-covered dirt berm instead of a wall. Driving at an angle, I was able to get over it and skid down to the street beyond. Once again, we gained a little ground.
A highway crossed ahead, leading to a short bridge that crossed the canal. As we approached, lights flashed and the bridge began to open in the center.
Well, if we were going to make this a chase worthy of a movie… Maria saw the look in my eyes and started to say something, but instead just found something to hold onto.
“What are we-” Luna started to say as I screeched around the corner to put us on the highway. She turned to look forward, seeing the ramp of the drawbridge as it rose.
The breakaway barrier smacked across the windshield and went on over the roof as it broke off. I heard the plastic lip on the bumper scrape as we hit the incline and felt the wheels bump.
Maria made that gasp-with-clenched-teeth sound that people in passenger seats make when you do something stupid.
Over the top, it almost felt calm and serene for about half a second there. We were fortunate that the bridge was only open a foot or two. The lightweight Fiat landed better than I would have expected on the downslope and we went on down the ramp.
Traffic stopped on the other side flashed by, surprised drivers staring at us as we raced away.
Glancing back, I saw that we’d lost the bikers. I let off the gas and the car slowed down.
Maria’s knuckles were white on the armrest. She looked at me. “Let’s never do that again.”
“We couldn’t outrun them, so I had to take drastic measures,” I pointed out. I glanced back at Luna. “Why couldn’t we get a faster car again?”
“I will tell you later,” she replied. “Perhaps when I manage to get control of my heartbeat. So, much later.”
“Well, if we can’t get a faster car, can we at least soup up this one? Replace a few parts to make it faster?”
Luna nodded. “Can you do that?”
“We can make it happen.” I knew just where we needed to go.