indecision flickered in Alexa's eyes. There was no doubt in anybody's mind that Hardcore would pull the trigger.
'Okay,' Alexa said, lowering her gun.
The rest was just housekeeping.
Two more Crips ran into the corridor, grabbed Alexa, and threw her on the floor. Dennis stepped back and another two gangbangers took Shane down in exactly the same fashion. Once subdued, they were both pulled up the stairs into a windowless neon-lit room about twenty feet long and ten feet wide. Across the end of the chamber were five tables with hammered metal tops. They looked as if they had perhaps once been milking shed tables, but now they were piled high with Baggies of powder, each one displaying White Dragon logos stenciled on the sides.
There were a dozen Crip and Blood bangers in the room with Dennis Valentine, all packing street sweepers or cut-down shotguns.
Farrell Champion and General Ruiz were not there.
Shane was shoved forward and saw Tony slumped in the corner, his shirt drenched in blood. His normally round, cherubic face had gone pale and damp. He looked like he was going into shock. Two Crip gunmen were standing over him, but the chief wasn't going to be causing any trouble. He was hanging by a thread, bleeding out.
'You gotta get him medical attention,' Alexa said anxiously. She was being held by a muscular banger whom Shane remembered from gang briefings: a dangerous Crip murderer known as Insane Wayne.
'You don't get it. All a you motherfuckas 'bout t' get taken off d'count,' Hardcore Hayes said in a deep Barry White-type voice.
Then, as if to prove the point, Tony started coughing-deep, rattling, dangerous sounds that scared Shane more than Hardcore's threats.
'It's not gonna go down that easy, Hayes,' Alexa said softly.
'Git your ass down offs your shoulder, bitch,' Hardcore growled. 'This is over.'
'I got troops rolling,' Alexa said. 'In a few minutes, this place is gonna look like a federal law enforcement convention.'
'Shut up, Alexa,' Shane growled. 'Don't give these jerkoffs anything.'
She looked over at him and glowered. It was bad acting-Dragnet theater-but it seemed to work. Dennis and Hardcore looked worried, like they suddenly didn't know how to play it.
'Put 'em in the container truck and get 'em outta here,' Valentine ordered. 'Rest a you guys load up the powder in the other tanker, then follow in the SUVs. Let's move outta here,' Dennis said, sudden urgency in his voice.
Alexa and Shane were dragged across the room toward another metal door, then pushed out into a large automated milking shed.
Shane could see that the sorting room they had just left had been partitioned off from the main building. The entire setup was pretty slick: Juan Ruiz, or whoever controlled White Cow Dairy, had dug an underground tunnel from the hay barn to the windowless room. The chiva was unloaded in the barn, brought through the tunnel to the sorting room, then walked through the milking shed into waiting tanker trucks and driven off the property to be distributed all over the State of California. The operation was invisible from the road and from the air.
Shane and Alexa were forced out of the milking shed into a covered distribution center where several twelve-wheel, shiny, aluminum refrigerated tanker trucks were parked. They all had White Cow logos on the cab doors.
Shane was dragged to the nearest truck.
'Up,' Dennis ordered. 'Climb.' He pushed Shane to the metal ladder that led to the top of the large aluminum tank.
'Can't… I'm lactose intolerant. Allergic to dairy,' Shane said. Dennis put his gun to the back of Shane's head and cocked it.
'Funny… case you haven't figured this out, you're already dead, asshole. I gave you and your lady a chance to get rich. You coulda had a piece of a sixty-billion-dollar business, but instead you turn into a fucking Boy Scout. You made your choice. I can waste you right now, but then I gotta drag your leakin' corpse up that ladder and ruin this great Armani suit. You wanna live another twenty minutes, you climb. Otherwise, you're on the ark right now.'
So Shane grabbed the metal ladder and started up to the top of the tanker. Two g'sters were waiting above. They were balanced on the shiny aluminum cask with their guns drawn. One of the Bloods was a fat, sweating O. G. in federated colors, a bright red running suit and matching head rag. Shane also recognized him from LAPD gang briefings-a Compton Blood named Li'l Hunchie.
'Don't make no jack move, mothafucka,' the O. G. said, training his auto-mag.
Shane went to the raised hatch and climbed in, lowering himself down. He held on to the opening for a while, but Li'l Hunchie got impatient and started stomping on his fingers. Shane yelled out in pain, then let go, and dropped the last three feet into the shiny cylindrical interior. His scream echoed in the hollow container, and as it diminished, he saw Alexa being lowered. He grabbed her legs, helping her down.
'Total cluster fuck,' she said once she was inside the cask.
'Where's our backup?' Shane demanded.
'I called SPD. Claimed they knew where this place was, but the better question is, what happened to the feds? They got here two hours ahead of us. Where the fuck are they? Did they stop for doughnuts?'
'You were supposed to hold the front,' Shane complained. 'You're sure not doing us much good in here, are ya!' There was anger in his voice, but he was frightened for her safety and that's how it manifested itself.
Tony was lowered down next. He was unconscious and his pants were soaked with blood. Shane could feel the coldness of the chief's body as he grabbed him, then laid him on the floor of the tanker.
The hatch was slammed shut and they were plunged into inky blackness.
'Shit, we gotta get a tourniquet on him, but I can't see a damned thing. You see where they hit him?' Alexa asked.
'Looked like he took one in the shoulder, another in the stomach or abdomen,' Shane answered.
He heard Alexa ripping fabric, tearing her jacket into strips. 'Make me some compresses,' she said. 'I'll find the bullet holes with my fingers. Jam this cloth in. We gotta stop this bleeding.'
Using his teeth, Shane started tearing his own jacket. He could feel her moving beside him, but could see absolutely nothing.
'Fuck you doing?' Tony growled.
'You're awake! Thank God,' she answered.
Tony started coughing. They were wet, racking coughs and Shane didn't like the sound of them.
Alexa was trying to find Tony's wounds by touch, stuff them with torn pieces of her jacket, then bind them up. Suddenly the truck lurched forward, throwing them all into a pile in the back.
The inside of the milk tank was slick, and Shane, still in his socks, was sliding around like a dog on ice. He stripped them off to get better traction, then tried to stand. The truck was rocking badly as it left the loading dock, so he couldn't keep his balance and was being thrown all over the place.
'Where are you?' he said as he felt the truck turn onto the dairy's main drive.
'Down here, on the right,' Alexa answered.
'When they open the hatch to take us out and kill us… that's when we have to-'
'I don't think we're getting out of here,' she said. 'If it was me, I'd crash this thing and set fire to it. Burn the evidence.'
'That's not very fucking encouraging,' Shane said.
Then Tony moaned and started coughing again.
He had only been inside the tanker for a few minutes, but already Shane was beginning to sweat profusely inside the airless tanker. He concentrated on balancing against the side, trying not to fall. But as the truck accelerated up the drive, they were both off balance, trying not to land on Tony.
Then the driver missed a shift and the engine screamed. The gears ground, then engaged, as they jerked hard and were picking up more speed. The truck turned sharply, then bounced and careened along, rocking badly. It felt as if the tanker had left the dairy's main road and was bouncing out into the field, out of control, going too fast.
