WAY OF THE GUN
Chapter 10
Getting hit never feels good. Getting hit by someone who knows what they're doing feels even worse.
I slowly regained consciousness to a confused jumble of noise and a light show behind my eyelids that could rival a professional Fourth of July display. I think I gagged on bile or something, my mouth tasted horrible and the throbbing in my head was overwhelming. Whatever it was that happened when I came to, it alerted Graves. Amidst the incoherent shouting I clearly heard, "Stay down!" followed by a sharp impact to my abdomen.
That time I did vomit. Christ, that man knows how to kick too! I lay there in self-pity for a few seconds, overwhelmed by the pain, then reminded myself of a few facts of life.
One: Jack, this is your damned job! Get your ass up and do it!
Two: You moron, there are other people out there who need you! Feel sorry for yourself some other time!
Three... well by then I didn't need three. The shouting ended abruptly with gunfire. Multiple sharp staccato thumps that you feel in your sinus cavities as the shock waves roar outward. Not that rapid fire shit you see in Lethal Weapon movies. Calm, aimed, efficient firing where each bullet is intended to be a lethal strike.
"Stay back, Lupo!" shouted Graves, his voice raw and harsh. The big man had a lot to work with for volume so it was a pretty strong bellow. I managed to open my eyes and sort out a few things.
Sergeant Lewis Graves was standing over Henry, who (thank you, God!) was still alive. He was curled up in a nearly fetal position, his face contorted in pain. Thin wire leads ran from Henry's body back to Graves' taser. We call them tasers but they're an in house brand. They can switch between the typical neuromuscular incapacitation and a "drive stun" pain-compliance mode that you can use through the wires. Most stunners require you to push the gun itself into the target for that.
Graves had his sidearm out, pointed at the house. His position wasn't terribly well thought out, but I suspected he wasn't thinking to clearly. We were still out in the open by the back yard lab. I couldn't see Jo or Hanson.
Henry tried to move again and Graves leaned into the button with a vengeance. Henry screamed. "Fine, asshole" I thought, "Let's try some pain compliance on you."
Jo's voice, sharp with command, came from the house. "Graves! Stand down soldier! What the hell is wrong with you man?"
"I said back off, Lupo! Go away! This is between me and Carter!" What the hell? I mean... um... what the hell? I hardly knew this clown! What possible reason could he have for this?
Oh. Brain wires. Shit. Wait a minute. So Graves didn't have a bone to pick with me, that meant it wasn't Graves doing the talking. Baxter? What, wearing Graves like a suit? Was that even possible?
Think, Carter, think! My head still hurt. A lot. Ow.
Baxter (best guess), not Graves. Jo wouldn't know, neither would Hanson. Maybe I could talk this down, God knows I really didn't want to, I wanted to hurt Baxter, and bad! But hurting Sergeant Graves' body wouldn't (probably) hurt Baxter, so that was off the table.
"Only one way for this to end, Graves!" Jo shouted from the house. "Put down the weapons before one of us puts a bullet in you! Backup's on the way already!"
My head was clearing some. I noted the shadow behind one of the upstairs windows at the same time Graves/Baxter did. The glock instantly tracked to the window and put three bullets in. How many had he fired already? I couldn't see the spent brass in the grass, no way of knowing.
Henry groaned and I swear that Graves/Baxter grinned when he leaned on the button. Again! Alright, Jack. Henry couldn't take much more of that. Asthma and that thing don't mix very well.
"What's up, Doc?" I groaned.
There was a mild convulsion of shock in Graves body and his head slowly turn toward me, eyes wide. "Oh, ho ho! Well aren't you the smart bully cop?" he almost cackled. Really.
"Henry hasn't done anything to you, Doc. Lay off the button." I demanded, then worked enough saliva around in my mouth to gather up some of the detritus and blood and spit the mess down on the ground. I was slowly moving away from the fetal roll into a crouch. Baxter wasn't kicking me so we were okay for a second or two.
"Hasn't done shit to me?" he exclaimed in an incredulous laugh. "You really are an incompetent aren't you? Deacon! Ruined! My! Legacy!" He punctuated each exclamation with a quick shot of the pain button. Again, stuff I didn't know... freakin' redacted files.
"This lily livered eco-hippie know-it-all destroyed years of my best work!" Baxter screamed through Graves' mouth. Another flash of insight hit me. When Pilar had made the decision, forcing me to shoot, I had sworn something had 'come over' her. The look in Graves eyes was exactly the same. Down to the facial tics.
Had Baxter, still in front of me, actually managed this and tried to suicide through Pilar? Oh Jesus, God... No. If that was true... if that was true then I had killed the wrong person... I really had murdered her!
I knew then that there really worse things than Russel Klein. A sad, cowardly version of Klein with the smarts to pull off something like this. A timid little maddened animal that wanted nothing more than to inflict pain to prove it's worth or strength.
"And now, you, who just had to ruin everything... well." He smiled. Any sane person would probably call it a rictus grin, the muscles in Graves' frame stretching oddly, like they weren't used to moving like this. The arm holding the pistol came up smoothly, lining up so the biggest thing in my attention was the nearly half inch diameter bore of that gun barrel.
Come on, Jo, use what I've given you.
Just as I thought that I noticed the tiny red pinprick of a laser sight flash over Graves' chest, and there was a semi-muffled thumpthumpthump! Graves/Baxter staggered to one side, dropping the taser but holding on to the pistol. The tracking wavered between Graves' reflexive urge to respond to the attack and Baxter's need to put a hole in me.
I took advantage of the distraction. I had been slowly moving into a ready posture, and when the gun stopped tracking me I lunged forward. My left arm forward and cross, I forced his gun arm up with my momentum. The weapon discharged just as I got my left hand on the shoulder-crotch of his armored vest. My right hand up, I found his gun hand and pried a pair of fingers loose.
Gotcha!
With a twist and a shove, I forced him off balance. He half-stumbled. I controlled his momentum by twisting hard on the fingers I had in hand and pushing with the other hand, leveraging his greater mass down. I assisted that by hooking a leg, stripping away his support. He went down on his stomach, right arm twisted out and back to nearly the breaking point while my wrenching of his fingers in a police special form of pain compliance caused him to drop the gun.
Guys that do tae kwan do, aikido, mma, whatever; they often miss out on some of the subtler things we learned in what one of my school buddies had jokingly called Police Brutality 101. It's a martial art without a name, really, not really a philosophy so much as some really, really hurtful moves. The finger hold is one of those. I don't care if the guy out masses me by 100 pounds, give me his hand and he's all mine.
Add that to the stuff Jo's taught me, once I'd learned humility at her feet in the ring (dammit, she is freakishly strong!), and maybe I could go teach Police Brutality 501: Advanced You're Mine Asshole.
Graves hollered his displeasure, and I answered by increasing my leverage. "Got you, Baxter. Let the man go, you aren't getting away with this!"
He laughed at me. It was a chilling thing, touched with a little madness, filled with spite and hate. "Got me, do you? Idiot! I don't have to feel this monkey's pain!"
Oh crap, Pilar's dislocated shoulder... With a grunt, Graves moved out from underneath me. This one I'm not trained for. The maneuver he pulled pretty much cost him any future use of his hand as I wrenched hard on the fingers, snapping them both way too far back. His shoulder popped, and the elbow and wrist joints sounded like I was stomping on bubble wrap. That was probably permanent damage.
Out of reflex I held on, but it didn't do me a whole lot of good. He got hold of me and rolled us over so that he was on top of me, wounded arm across my throat full of the big man's native strength and driven by Baxter's rage. With his other hand he reached down and, in a move that gave me a whole new definition of pain, grabbed my lower floating rib.
"I'm gonna break this and drive it through your stomach, Carter. It's going to perforate the lining, and leak acid all over your insides." he drawled. "Then I think I'll start dislocating fingers, joint-by-joint!" He bounced lightly on the rib and I couldn't help it, I screamed with the pain.
"You ruined it, you stupid ape. Everything! It was going to be perfect! No loose ends. Stupid bitch suicides after it, all nice and clean. You ruined it! Now I'm gonna ruin you!" He drew back, ready to carry through on the threat, and a muted coughing thump came from my right.
There was a meaty thwack, and then his throat simply wasn't there anymore.
Blood fountained over me.
There was a stunned expression in Graves' eyes, and I looked deep within. The manic light faded, and true, horrible confusion set in. Then he was dead. I saw it happen, saw the light leave.
The corpse collapsed on me, but the grip on my rib had gone and the absence of pain was euphoric. With a grunt of exhalation, Hanson moved in and kicked Graves' body off of me. I coughed and grabbed Hanson's outstretched hand, wheezing "Good shooting, Hanson, thanks!"
"Sorry it took me so long to get there, sir. I'm kinda shocked he let me do it though, I know I broke cover." Hanson shook his head. He wasn't happy, but the adrenalin was still pumping. It would take a few minutes for the reality to set in. I didn't envy him one bit.
Jo came running up from the house and knelt down next to Henry. He weakly moved, coughed some, and groaned when she helped him sit upright. "How are you?" she asked.
He just nodded, his breathing labored, fumbling for something in his pockets. His inhaler, most likely. She turned to look at me and flinched, crying "Son of a bitch! Carter? Are you okay?"
I must have looked a sight. My adrenalin was still flying. This time I was sure it wasn't my own blood in my mouth I was tasting. That thought made me gag and cough, trying to spit out Graves' blood while I nodded and threw a shaky thumbs up at her.
Lieutenant Hanson was looking kinda pale though. He shook his head a bit, as if to clear it, and seemed to sag. The realization of what he'd just done probably hitting him right then. Jo saw it to, cast one last concerned glance at me, then led her man to a spot a little farther away from the corpse and helped him sit down. I overheard whispered encouragement, "You had to, Mike. You had to. It was him or Carter."
I left them to it. It wasn't my place to get in that man's mind right now. I'd be buying him a beer sometime this week, though.
Henry looked up at me and grimaced. He was breathing better, but looked very shaky. He threw a hand out and I grabbed it, assisting him in standing. Together we walked toward the lab's door.
"You okay, Jack?" he asked. "You look like hell."
"I'll be fine," I reassured him, lying a little. That one would be with me. It'd be for different reasons than Pilar, but it was somewhere between that innocent girl and the stone cold Klein.
He didn't look reassured. "Seriously, what the hell was that? I was... not very focused... but I thought you were calling him Baxter. Tom Baxter? The guy you're here for?"
I sighed. Active case files aren't supposed to leave law enforcement, and I'd been trying to limit Henry's exposure to it. He was still mayor of Eureka though, and I supposed that I could relax a bit. I explained about Allison's discovery, as concisely as possible. Every revelation caused an expression change. At first I could see that he wanted to interject, had thought of something, but he let me spill the whole story that I could before making commentary.
"Wires in the brain," he mused. "That sounds similar to a project I helped close a few years back. One of Doctor King's superb choices as Director of Research, but all I did was testify against it. I knew it was bad, and I knew they'd eventually go for human trials, so I lobbied hard to stop that. It's horrible stuff, Jack."
"Project Lobot?" I asked.
He blinked. "Well, yes, but..." he trailed off
"And was Tom Baxter part of it?" I asked. That shock may have scrambled him up a little bit if he was missing this.
"Sure, I think so. He wasn't a lead researcher, but his name was on a lot of the stuff, I think. You don't think that and this are..." he trailed off again, either distracted or thinking. With Henry you're never quite sure. Sometimes his brain just works so hard he forgets the world is around him.
"What about Bob Graham." I led him on.
"Maybe... Pilar's father? I..." and then he got it. "Was never here. Listen, Jack. In our time line the project got shut down early. I helped testify against it, but it was done and gone by the turn of the century."
I sighed. "It went farther here, Henry. Last dated report I saw on the project was set in 2006. It went a lot farther here. And almost everything about it is redacted and in Mansfield's hands." Dammit!
Just then Lieutenant Hanson burst out at Jo, "I'm fine, Chief! Just give me a minute, okay?" His tone was offended, but also strained. Jo blinked back some emotion, something the shuttered quickly. She nodded, and stood, briskly walking over toward us.
"Jesus, Carter. You look like shit!" she said. I laughed out loud at that one. Of course I would. I'd need a full scrub down for this one. Henry puzzled over the mystery I'd left him, then shook his head sharply as though dismissing something.
Mutually we decided to have a look inside the lab. By this time I found a towel inside the lab and started using it to try and clear off the blood. Disgusting work.
Second to the journal, finding the inside of that lab was one of the more disturbing things I've seen. I said before that we'd eventually find evidence on the property, but none of us really truly expected what we did find.
We puzzled over quite a few things inside, or I should say that Jo and I did. Henry seemed to know absolutely everything he was looking at. He pulled up computer screens, had a look in them, surveyed racks of chemicals and distillation gear. I'm not talking beakers and retorts and alembics, the stuff that I learned about chemistry on. The machines in here were mystifying to me.
The really disturbing part was on a GD-style tablet sitting in one corner of the office. I'm not sick enough to describe everything image for image, but lets suffice it to say that we learned who had been taking advantage of Pilar.
Jo saw a few of the images, choked and looked at me, her eyes pleading. How to make this stop? "Jail isn't good enough for this son of a bitch, Carter! Nothing is!" I agreed, but for the sake of my morals tried to believe in justice, just a little. I believed in the system, I told myself. I believed in justice.
I was lying to myself.
Jo snarled something incoherent and stormed out of the building, unable to contain her anger.
Henry glanced up to watch her leave and then went back to his work. "From a science perspective, Jack, there's interesting things here... but it's not what I need. There's missing gear. Someone removed several components, and I can tell you from the power resources routing to this lab that whatever it is takes a lot of juice."
He seemed dejected. "I can only guess about how this is going to work, but I have a fairly good idea. It's just that most of the notes that would tell me exactly what I need are scrubbed from the system. A secure data store was deleted less than 8 hours ago." He pointed at a rack of machines with blinking lights on them.
I felt weary. "What are you trying to tell me, Henry?"
"That I can't stop whatever this is from happening again, not yet, anyhow." He punctuated that throwing his hat on the lab table, disgusted.
I was about to say something more when I heard a scuffle outside, a whump of impact, and Jo grunt in pain.
Oh no!
Reacting even before Hanson's voice mangled "Carter! Come on out-" I was out the door, this time my gun was drawn before I even cleared the portal. Acting on instinct instead of stepping out, I ran out the door, trusting to speed and surprise.
In a brief glance I noticed Hanson holding Jo and a choke hold. She was doing her level best to get out of it, but he wasn't responding to the pains she was inflicting. His gun was out, pointing at the door, and his face was set in that rictus grin that had dominated Graves' features.
Not another one! I should've seen it! Appetite increase, sweats, shaky standing. Dammit, Jack, you're supposed to be the observant one!
As I cleared the door Hanson's Glock 23 barked several times, but the shots were badly timed. He seemed to be aiming with a very jerky arm, and as he fired Jo redoubled her efforts. The mass disparity between the two was marked, however. Given equal fighting skill, the bigger guy with the reach advantage almost always wins, so it was an even tussle between them.
I came up out of a roll on the grass, my body screaming at me that it wasn't 24 years old anymore. I lined my gun for some sort of shot but couldn't finding anything. He had Jo between us really damned good, and I wasn't going to risk her.
I had a flash of insight, and realized why Baxter seemed to be having such a hard time! The kid was fighting him for all he was worth!
With a wrench and a tug he managed to bring the Glock around on me and pulled the trigger.
At the very last second Jo bucked, knocking the handgun out of the line of fire. The slide stayed open.
Empty!
I put my gun slightly off the mark so I wouldn't risk shooting Jo. Hanson's face twisted into several distinct grimaces, and he dropped the gun. "Come on, Baxter." I said, trying hard to keep the hate out of my voice. "Let the kid go. You're out of bullets, you can't reload without Jo taking the kid down!"
Hanson made the oddest mumbling gurgle, finally drawing out a half strangled "No!", then his words got a little clearer, after he stretched out his jaw and waved his tongue around, like he was trying out muscles he hadn't used in a while. Duh... because he was. "You're such an idiot, Jack Carter" Hanson/Baxter said. "You just don't appreciate how much of one you are. And now you never will!"
I'd missed the kid's hand silently creeping behind Jo's back. He suddenly yanked his free arm up, holding a freaking fragmentation grenade!
There wasn't a single thing I could do. I watched in horrified shock as Hanson's hand, under Baxter's control, thumbed out the safety pin and popped the spoon, then closed his grip on the grenade.
Oh God, no! Jo!
Second Lieutenant Michael Jacob Hanson is... was... a hero. A true, dyed in the wool All-American boy made good. I've made it a point to learn about him, about everything he'd been through up until that day, about his family, and to even be there for his funeral. Because I owe him a debt I can never repay. I owe him Jo's life.
As soon as the spoon popped, Hanson's face became utterly terrified. In a split second he issued the most pained noise I've ever heard a human being make, and I knew he'd won free of Baxter's influence. Exploding into action he pushed Jo forward, away from him. He immediately followed that by pulling the live grenade up against his armor vest and folding himself over the weapon.
Then it blew.
I don't think I can really give you an idea of what it's like to be near a grenade when it blows up. There's no flash of flame, no fire, just a concussive thump that shakes every single soft tissue in your body.
The explosion killed him. If he survived very long, it wasn't long enough for me to make it to his side. The advanced armor that GD Security wears, I think they call it Dragonskin, is really amazing stuff. On top of that this was the latest generation that GD had been working on. Their boys get the best. That vest is what contained most of the explosion. Still, a rain of steel shrapnel bits winged through the kill zone, several impacting Jo, who fell into me.
I heard myself yelling "No" over and over again as I tried to help, but honestly what followed over the next several hours is all a blur.
I am told that Henry came out, helped me to stop the bleeding while GD's medical folks made their second visit to Baxter's house in the same week. The doctors that work as paramedics around here know their craft. Between immediate first aid and profession care within minutes of injury, Jo didn't die that day.
I escaped largely unscathed, because Jo and her armor were between me and the grenade. I don't call it luck. Luck doesn't put your friends in the way of death. That's... I don't know... cruel. The divine agency laughing at you.
In the end all of us got carted back to Medical to have our injuries seen to. I refused to be parted from her on the ride.
Disclaimer: I don't own Eureka, it's characters, or its concepts, I'm just playing for fun and an educational experience.
Author's Notes: The darkest revelation about the story yet. I knew this was going to be rough when I sat down to write this chapter, so I hope you all can bear with it.
I may joke a bit about the police brutality thing. I'm not trying to dismiss actual cases where jerk-offs in authority decide it's okay to be a bully. Really, when I was in school with a few friends doing criminal justice courses, they jokingly called the physical defense stuff "police brutality 101".
I used to be derisive to them about incomplete forms, but after one or two practice bouts I learned the hard way not to get so freakin' cocky. That crap works!