"Situation at Portland Hospital, all cars Portland area report to
situation at Portland Hostpital." The radio blared in the car. It was a
pretty slow day so far, but my partner was dying for some action, and for
once I could say the same about myself. That's how it goes in this city,
all the screwballs start laying off until the end of the week. Then things
get hot. It just so happened to be nighttime on a Friday with the moon
climbing high over the Liberty City skyline, coaxing all the havoc out of
it's borderline denizens.
The radio cackled the message again. We didn't even need to call in
asking what they meant by "situation". It was like second nature to us.
Tim didn't even look at me, he just turned the siren on and slammed his
foot onto the accelerator. We took off in a black and white blur.
There were some messed up people on the force and Tim was one of them. I'd
been a cop for 4 years and his partner for 2 months and already I'd been
traumatized. There was this one time Tim caught this kid in an alley after
a chase and cornered him between two dumpsters. He told me to go watch the
car while he pried the baseball bat from the kid's fingers. Jesus, he
wasn't even 20, just some young mind pulled into a mob mentality. The kid
was on his knees, pleading with Tim, but Tim just stood there, his huge
chest heaving up and down from all the running and his police hat cocked
jauntily towards the back of his head. He looked like some twisted Santa
Claus in a blue suit as he rolled up his sleeves over his fat hairy arms.
He looked down his sweaty nose at the kid as his mustache curled into a
grotesque grimace. I went back to the car and listened to the dull smacks
of the bat on some inner-city youth, each swing punctuated by his scream
for mercy. I sat there paralyzed, flinching with every curse that came
from Tim's lips and every bloody cry from the kid's, and when the screams
stopped coming, Tim walked back to the car and we drove off like nothing
had happened.
He was driving like a madman, but we all do that. It's part of our
training. They put us in a cop car, have us speed toward a stack of cinder
blacks at 80 mph and then tell us whether to turn left or right just before
impact. Tim cut a corner by riding over the sidewalk, the car bending the
reflection of streetlights as they shot by. He grinned.
"The guy sure did pick a dumb place to start some shit!" Tim said,
his jowels bouncing with every lurch the car made. He pulled the corner of
his brown mustache as he hit the handbrake and cut a 90-degree turn through
the shipping yards, then continued. "I mean, if I was a homicidal nutcase
I think I'd know not to start a killing spree right next to the police
station!" Tim's fat face curled into a smile, as if to punctuate the irony
of his statement. He was the most homicidal nutcase I'd met.
We pulled onto Main St with the Hospital and Police Station right
next to each other at the end of the block. Tim and I both gasped as we
saw what the "situation" was. There were flaming police cars everywhere,
the street illuminated by their evil glow. The ground was covered in the
bodies of either dead or wounded policemen and members of local gangs. It
was a full-scale battlefield, complete with grenades exploding and rockets
flying and people screaming for medical attention. And at the heart of it
all was one guy in a black leather jacket and some cargo khakis, his
overgrown sideburns hugging his frown as he stood on top of an overturned
SWAT car and emptied a clip of machine gun fire onto the sea of policemen
below. We watched with wide eyes as the police force finally got on top of
the SWAT car with him, their guns blazing as he jumped off seconds before
the car exploded sending their bodies 20 feet into the air.
He had seriously killed just about every cop in Portland.
Tim's fat fingers grabbed the radio. "Requesting assistance at
Portland Hospital!" He screamed, his fingers turning white as they
clutched the transmitter. But he knew that all the assistance was already
here, and that the FBI wouldn't care until he crossed the Liberty City
bridge. I watched as Tim's face grew angry, the primitive aggression
brought to a boil. He stepped out of the car. I cocked my gun.
We both ran full speed ahead, stepping over bodies and trash and
dodging oncoming gunfire to the frontline of police cars. We took cover
with 2 other cops and a member of a local Asian gang behind an ambulance.
A rocket screamed overhead before it slammed into a LCPD helicopter,
causing it to spin out of control into the Police Station. Tim stepped out
screaming and let 4 shots fly. One hit the man in the shoulder. He didn't
even flinch. Tim cursed. He rolled back behind the ambulance and
addressed us.
"Ok. He's built himself a barricade of police cars and from what I
gather he's stockpiled a lot of ammo." He said, raising his voice over the
gunfire in the backround.
One of the police officers shouted back. "What the fuck are we
supposed to do?!"
Tim turned to him. "We get into this ambulance and spearhead it
right through his barricade. I'll drive, you guys get in the back. As
soon as we crash through everyone hop out and open fire."
We all nodded in agreement, even the Triad member. Tim hopped into
the front seat and the rest of us climbed though the back doors. The
ambulance lurched forward as Tim screamed and cursed, gripping the steering
wheel with ferocity.
We crashed through two police cars parked next to each other, both of
them spinning out of the way. Tim was the only one with a seatbelt on, so
the rest of us were thrown to the floor. It was fortunate for us that we
weren't still standing because a stream of bullets suddenly pierced through
the ambulance, letting little shafts of streetlight in through the jagged
bulletholes. As soon as the gunfire stopped the Triad member popped up and
jumped out of the back. He let his Uzi loose and it screamed in short
interrupted burst as it jumped around in his hand. Tim climbed into the
back with us just in time to see the Triad member lifted off the ground
with a return of machine gun fire. His lifeless body hit the ground with a
dull thud, a cloud of dust lifted up around him. We all lay there on the
floor of the ambulance, wondering how we were going to stay alive.
I can't really explain what happened next: Tim screamed something
while he jumped out of the ambulance and before the other two cops or I had
a chance to react there was a bright white flash and a loud noise and the
entire ambulance was lifted off the ground. After that everything was
quiet and I remember being dazed for a little while with a broken leg on
the ceiling of the ambulance. I slowly regained my strength and propped
myself up on my bleeding elbow. The front of the vehicle was on fire and
the other two cops were very, very dead.
I crawled out of the flaming ambulance with my arms dragging my legs
behind me, the backs of my hands charred and a sharp pain in my chest when
I breathed in. I made it about 8 feet from the ambulance when I realized
that Tim and the guy in the leather jacket were fighting in a small
clearing. Tim was getting his ass handed to him in clenched fistfuls and
the guy didn't look like he was going to stop anytime soon.
The weirdest part was that the guy with the jacket didn't say a word.
Usually they're screaming their brains out, talking bout how they're on
some mission from god or how they're fighting for the good of the people,
but this guy didn't even sneeze. I watched Tim get knocked to the ground
with a straight punch. He lay there long enough for the guy to pull a
bottle of pills out of his pocket and pop two into his mouth. Tim got up
and was met by a roundhouse that sent him10 feet into the air. The guy
moved with incredibly speed and at the peak of Tim's ascent he shot him
twice with a shotgun. Tim fell to the ground and did not get up again.
By then I had crawled over to the body of the Triad member. I ignored his
blank and lifeless gaze and I pried the Uzi from his cold fingers. I
rolled over and with all the strength left in me I raised the gun to the
guy's head as he stood over the body of Tim. I coughed up a little blood
and said "Freeze asshole."
The guy spun around. I must've been a pitiful sight: bruised and bleeding
with a compound exposed fracture and a smear of blood following me from the
flaming ambulance, holding up a shaking gun in his direction. He walked
over to me slowly. His head eclipsed the streetlight above us and I saw
all the bruning cars around us reflected in his eyes, their yellow glow
playing off of his body. I sucked in a breath as I trained the gun between
his eyes and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked, announcing to the man
and I that it was out of ammo.
My hand went loose and the Uzi slid out of my bloody grip. I looked up at
him as he pulled a handgun from inside his jacket and pointed it at me. He
stood there like that for a couple of seconds, the shadows on his face
changing with the flickering firelight. He cocked the gun and shot the
tires out on the cop car behind me. He quickly hopped into the only other
cop car that wasn't on fire and sped off towards the harbor. Yeah, right.
Like I was going to follow him.
