Angry tears filled LoLa’s eyes when she raised her gun again.
Shorty threw a blue backpack at her. With its lightweight aluminum frame, the pack hit the pavement and bounced high, almost removing his former lover’s head from her compact body.
She fired in hasty retaliation, but the bullet pinged harmlessly off the side of the bus.
Shorty followed with a volley of a half-dozen open suitcases: boxer shorts, pajamas, blouses, underwear, a smart tuxedo, and a rubber diving suit all flowed through the doorway and sailed down the freeway.
LoLa and her driver backed off after the bike nearly went into the ditch, when a small blue box exploded and a flock of errant panty liners got stuck on the bearded monster’s goggles.
Best of all, Shorty found a large, unopened Toblerone bar. It was the size of his left arm.
As Shorty contemplated ripping open the triangular packaging, the dark, windowless van pulled up level with the bus. Its side door slid open to reveal three men dressed in head-to-toe body armor, complete with knitted balaclavas that showed only their eyes, and holding paramilitary-style submachine guns.
Shorty gulped and dropped the chocolate. “Y-you want the drugs?”
The three men nodded as one.
Shorty crawled back over the scattered luggage and pulled one of the black bags to the door. The van moved closer to the bus. One of the men grabbed the bag and yanked. Shorty instantly let his end go before he was pulled out of the bus along with it.
“Get the others,” yelled the shortest of the three. It was difficult to tell the man’s exact height, but in Shorty’s estimation anything over four feet was a waste of vertical.
Shorty retrieved the third bag, but this time, when he went to hand it over, the head of the reaching gunman imploded, his balaclava mask becoming a sieve of blood.
Gunfire and broken glass rained from the passenger compartment above. The other two gunmen quickly ducked inside the van and returned fire. Both vehicles swerved and the dead gunman slid out of the van to vanish in a pink mist, but he left something behind snagged in the nylon handle of the drug bag-his submachine gun.
With the sound of two-way automatic gunfire filling the air, Shorty picked up the gun and grunted. It was heavier than he expected.
Shorty had never fired a machine gun before, but he’d seen plenty of movies. Getting used to the weight, he turned it on its side. A small dial marked in red pointed to two symbols. One showed a single bullet, the other showed three. He reasoned this toggled the gun between single-shot and full- auto modes.
Shorty flipped the switch to full-auto and pointed its barrel out the open doorway. People were screaming in their seats above as the bus continued to barrel on at top speed and bullets flew in both directions. Shorty imagined the greedy driver, knuckles white as he gripped the steering wheel, desperately searching for help and cursing the day he met a crooked dwarf with a Hollywood smile and an offer too rich to refuse.
Shorty drew in a deep breath and squeezed the trigger. Rounds spat from the gun like a horde of angry wasps with lead stingers. His first bullets chewed up the road before the gun’s unexpected kick drew the muzzle skyward. Shorty released the trigger before a volley stitched the metal ceiling. Fortunately, the van had been an impossible target to miss. His stray bullets shredded its front tires, windshield, and roof.
Without tires, the van’s front rims dug into the road and its ass end flew into the sky for a series of cartwheels that would have made an overweight gymnast proud. Two screaming bodies flailed into the air as the van exploded. Its flaming carcass careened off the road and rolled down a sharp ravine to a farmer’s field below.
Shorty looked at the gun in surprise. It packed a lot of wallop for such a small-
A bullet smashed through the ceiling and tore a chunk of meat from his arm. Shorty cried out and dropped the gun, only to watch in stunned horror as it bounced once on the floor before sliding out the open doorway.
Shorty’s cries were silenced when another bullet pierced the ceiling and puckered the floor between his legs. It was followed by an angry voice.
“You little bastard! Think you can steal from me?”
Another bullet, this time less than four inches from his head. Shorty dove into the remaining luggage and scrambled toward the rear of the hold… where he found Twinkle’s handgun. He snapped it up in both hands as the drug dealer pumped another hole through the ceiling.
This time, instead of retreating, Shorty sprinted to the fresh hole, jammed his gun against it, and squeezed the trigger.
A loud scream echoed through the hold and a heavy thump hit the ceiling as the gunman fell.
“You shot my fucking bal-”
Shorty aimed his gun where a bump had suddenly appeared in the ceiling and fired again. By the time he ran dry, the screaming had stopped.
“Nice work,” said LoLa. “You always did overcompensate.”
Shorty spun. The motorbike and sidecar was matching pace outside again, while LoLa was armed and pissed and standing in the doorway of the baggage compartment.
“And you were always nimble.” Shorty dropped his empty gun to the floor and cradled his wounded arm.
“So what do we have left?” LoLa asked.
“Between us or-”
“Drugs, numbnut.”
Shorty indicated the lone black bag sitting near the open doorway. “Twenty kilograms of uncut heroin. Worth around two million.”
“Hardly seems worth the trouble.”
Despite himself, Shorty grinned. “You’ve come that far up in the world, huh?”
LoLa smiled. “Never walked taller.”
She lifted her gun and fingered the trigger.
Shorty blurted, “There’s a fourth bag.”
LoLa’s smile brightened and she eased off the trigger. “Oh?”
“Six hundred thousand in cash. I figure you take the drugs, leave me the dough. I’ve earned it.”
“Earned it? You cost me four good men, transportation, weapons, and dry-cleaning, not to mention my brother.”
“You never liked Twinkle much.”
“No, but I loved him.”
Shorty and LoLa stared at each other for an endless moment, a thousand memories shared in the blink of an eye.
“We’ll always have Paris,” said Shorty.
LoLa snorted. “A fishbowl fuck in Tennessee doesn’t count, Shorty, don’t you get that? I need more than road trips in a broken-down VW van, nightclubs with putrid toilets, and hiding from the landlord on rent day. You always thought too small. I plan to live large.”
“You’ve gone hard.”
“No, Shorty. The problem is, you’ve stayed soft.” She waved the gun at his chest. “Get me the bag.”
Shorty tilted his chin. “It’s just back there.”
“Do I look like I do heavy lifting? Get it.”
Shorty scrambled over the remains of the unopened luggage and pulled out the last black bag. He hefted it onto his shoulder, wincing at the pain, and returned to the woman he’d once loved.
“Pity it has to end this way, honeybee,” he said.
LoLa thumbed back the hammer.
When the bus pulled into the Texaco station ten minutes later, a squad of eight patrol cars swarmed around it. The men and women in blue were bundled in armor-plated protection, riot helmets, and enough firepower to ventilate a crack den.
They removed the traumatized passengers first before rushing the luggage compartment.
They didn’t meet any resistance.
Inside was a lone body dressed in head-to-toe black, its lifeblood coating a duffel bag filled with twenty kilos of pure, uncut heroin.
The dead woman had a tiny screwdriver protruding from her chest and half a Toblerone bar stuffed in her mouth.
