Kate's Run
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: You know the drill. Rating: K. Time: See below.
"So, what do we do?" Alexis asked.
"We do the job we were paid to do. But we make sure we have an ace in the hole."
Kate worked on that ace un the hole and then they kept going.
Old Jake Plummer did try to charge them twenty dollars to cross the bridge. Kate tossed down five silver dollars. "Take it or leave it." Old Jake took it.
They came around a sharp turn to find larger truck completely blocking the way. In the truck were a dozen men, all armed and all with their weapons pointed at the three women.
"Afternoon, ladies. I'm Joe Edderly and you have some things for me. In fact, you've brought me three more things than you thought you were bringing. Now, get down from the truck and lose those weapons."
Kate smiled and held up her phone and a small grey ball of something.
"First, you might want to watch this." She threw the ball and then pushed a button on her phone. The ball exploded.
"If you'd care to take a look, you'll see that Mr. Fellowes sent you some plastique explosives, which I have placed on top of the crates of your weapons and ammo. To set them off, all I need to do is release the button on my phone that I'm now holding down."
"You do that and you're all dead." Edderly sneered.
"True, but we figured you'd kill us anyway after you used us, so why not get a little revenge when we die?"
"I don't believe you."
"There's only one way to find out, isn't there?" Kate replied with a smile.
Edderly thought for a while, clearly something he was not accustomed to.
"Okay, now what?" He asked.
"You get out of your truck and go about a hundred yards down the road. We take your truck and drive off. When we get far enough away, my phone won't have the range to blow up your weapons. Now move."
"How far?" One of the men asked.
Kate looked skyward.
"Well, with the position of the satellites right now, I'd say we'd need to be about ten miles away before you'd be safe."
The men talked to each other, then got off the truck and moved away.
"Good thinking. Now, we'll be taking your truck, and you can have ours."
The three women ran to the other truck and got in, with Alexis behind the wheel.
"Good", she said, as the engine started," the gas tank is almost full."
They roared away from the men. Kate and Tilla looked behind them.
"They aren't going near the truck." Kate said.
"What would you have done if they'd called your bluff?" Tilla asked.
"What bluff? If I'd let go of the button on my phone, we'd have all blown up."
"What? And you have to hold the button down for ten miles? What happens if your finger cramps or something."
"Ten miles? That may be a bit of an exaggeration. It's more like five hundred yards. My phone won't net with the local comm satellites." She lifted her finger off the phone and put it back in her pocket."
"You would have killed us all?" Tilla said.
Kate shrugged and laughed.
"If you'd like to go back and be raped and murdered, we'll stop and let you out."
"I thought I was a badass. You're something else."
"Don't ever forget it."
If Fellowes was surprised to see them come back, he hid it well. He did notice that all three ladies had kept their pistols on. The shotgun was in the truck, parked on a side street.
"How did it go?" He asked.
"No problem. But Joe said that he'd need your truck for something. He said you'd understand."
"I suppose." He looked at them and sighed.
"Gina, pay them off."
Gina handed them their money, in gold coins.
"Nice working for you, but we're going to leave." Kate said.
They backed out of the bar and began walking quickly to their new truck.
"If nothing happens, we'll be far away from here by the time Edderly gets a message back to Fellowes and he finds out what really happened."
Naturally, something did happen.
They were walking towards their truck when a man called out to them.
"Beckett, is that you?"
She slid her hand to the butt of her sidearm, then recognized the speaker. He was sitting against the exterior wall of a store.
"Doyle? Is that you? What are you doing here?"
"Dying. I got shot by one of Bracken's goons here. I got him, but he got me."
"Where are you hit?"
"Left leg."
"That doesn't sound bad. We'll get you to a doctor."
"I've already seen what passes for a doctor around here. The bullet I was shot with was coated in some kind of chemical agent." He pulled up his pant leg. There was a bandage around the wound, but the skin around the wound was black and you could smell that the leg was beginning to rot.
"The doctor gave me some local antibiotics, but he didn't think they'd do anything but slow things down a bit. That's all they've done. But I can help you."
"How?"
"Turns out Bracken has money, phony IDs and other stuff scattered all over, just in case things go bad for him. Some are in wealthy, civilized colonies, some are in dumps like this. He has a safe deposit box here. I have the key and the code you'll need to get in." he handed Kate a key. "The code is 48TF29RK."
"We just walk in and walk out?" That sounded too easy to Kate.
"Not that easy. Bracken has some local thugs on retainer here, so to speak. They know Bracken's man is dead and the safe deposit box key is gone, and the code is probably lost too. They have two men sitting in an old car just up the street from the bank. They have six more people who trades shifts to keep an eye on the bank and to come a running if anyone tries to access the box. They have someone inside who'll contact them if someone comes in for Bracken's stash."
"So how do we get in and out?"
'Walk in and access the safety deposit box. When you're ready to leave, call me. You should have my number from the old days, right?"
Kate nodded.
"The goons will have their eyes on the front door. So, I'll walk up with my little friend and waste them." He pulled a submachine gun out of a small soft sided bag. "I have a spare gun for you, and I have lots of ammo. I'll only need three or four 32 round clips. The goons have assault rifles. Old but serviceable. I'll grab them and hold the other goons off while you go out the back. Make sure everyone thinks a whole bunch of murderous killers are shooting up the town. Everyone will panic and go out the back."
Kate took the bag and checked the contents. In addition to the submachine gun and clips, there were two boxes of 7mm bullets and a standard issue Constabulary automatic pistol.
"Can you give me a hand up. Let me lean on you until we get to the corner where you turn to get to the bank. You'll have to walk right past the goons in their car."
"Ready?" Kate asked.
"Ready as I'll ever be."
The three women walked into the bank, the only one in town and asked to get into their safety deposit box. Kate showed her key and gave the correct code. A teller led the three to the safety deposit boxes. Kate noticed that the manager got on his phone and kept his eyes on them the whole time.
The box contained a lot of money, documents and some papers. Kate just scooped the whole lot into the bag with the submachine gun and grabbed her phone.
"Doyle, we're ready."
"Okay, give me five seconds."
In less than five seconds there were two long bursts of gunfire from outside the bank.
"Someone's shooting up the town. We'll all be killed." Kate yelled. Both Alexis and Tilla began screaming.
A burst of fire shattered the wooden door to the bank, but the burst was high, hitting no one.
"Out the back way." Yelled a man.
"The back door has to be locked during business hours." The manager said, looking at Kate and her friends.
"Are you nuts?" The man screamed. "You'll open the door, or I'll have my boys batter it down using your head as a battering ram." The three young men standing next to him looked like they could do just that.
The manager opened the back door but tried to grab Kate as she left. She punched him in the solar plexus, and they all ran. Once they got to their truck, they roared out of town.
Once they were a few miles out of town, Alexis pulled over to the side of the road.
"So, where are we going?"
Kate was looking at her pad.
"Assuming this map is right, there's a dirt road about a mile ahead that heads off to the east and goes all the way to someplace called Port Bellamy."
"A spaceport?" Tilla asked.
"No. A seaport. But we should be able to get a ship to Firenza. Unless anyone has a better idea, I say we go to Port Bellamy."
No one had a better idea.
They found the dirt road and sped east. Well, they sped as fast as they could on a poorly maintained dirt road. As it was getting dark, they pulled off the road into some trees. Kate used her vibro-knife to cut a branch off and used it to wipe away the tracks of the truck leaving the road. Then they looked at what they'd gotten at the bank.
"That's a lot of money." Alexis said with a smile.
"Eighty thousand US dollars in hundreds." Kate said, "plus another three thousand in twenties, tens and fives. All used bills, no consecutive serial numbers."
"Why the smaller bills?" Tilla asked.
"I bet if you used a hundred-dollar bill in a place like New Windsor, people would remember. Paying for something with a five wouldn't stand out."
"There's more money." Alexis said.
"Both Russian rubles and Chinese renminbis. About…" Kate paused. "Maybe thirty thousand dollars' worth. They also have lots a large denomination bills and some smaller bills."
"What else?" Tilla asked.
"Passports and fake IDs for Bracken, his wife, what must be his mistress and his sons, I think. We might as well toss them."
"Don't." Tilla said. "We probably couldn't find anyone to alter them for us, but forgers would pay good money for a real diplomatic passport like that one to copy from to make a fake."
"Okay, we keep them. We also have some documents."
They looked through them.
"Colonel Marran, in Constabulary Intelligence works for Bracken. So does some congressman from Panama. And here's a judge with a thing for young girls. With photos, no less."
"We should send those back to Earth." Alexis said.
"Yeah, if we just knew someone we could trust not to give them to Bracken."
"Bummer."
"We'll keep them handy just in case we need to blackmail the judge someday. Unlikely as that might be."
The three women pulled blankets out of their suitcases and went to sleep in the truck's bed.
Kate woke up in the morning to see two people standing at the back of the truck, looking at them. They were a boy and a girl, both in their teens. But the boy had a rifle over his shoulder.
"Morning." He said.
Kate had taken her gun belt off to sleep and the shotgun and submachine gun were not in easy reach.
"Good morning." She said, kicking at Alexis and Tilla to wake them up.
TBC