“Ha! Over my dead body.”
“That can be arranged.”
“Mother?” says Ceepak “Get behind me. Now.”
Mrs. Ceepak holds her ground. “I’m not afraid of you, Joseph. Not any more.”
“Mother?” Ceepak reaches for her,
Mr. Ceepak stumbles off his stool. “You ungrateful bitch. After all I did for you.”
And up comes Mr. Ceepak’s pistol.
Every trigger finger in the pizza parlor is ready to fire.
“Don’t!” shouts Ceepak.
We all think he’s talking to us.
He isn’t.
He’s yelling at his father while jumping in front of his mother.
A shot rings out.
Smacks Ceepak.
He goes spinning. Blood is spurting out of his thigh. As he twists around, he grits his teeth hard, grabs hold of his mother. The two of them topple in a heap to the boardwalk. My friend covers his mother, shields her from Crazy Joe’s second shot.
I am so ready to take the bastard down.
But Mr. Ceepak moves his free hand over that blinking green button.
“Anybody takes a shot, David dies!” he screams.
“Stand down!” orders the chief.
“Don’t shoot!” shouts Mayor Sinclair.
Mr. Ceepak’s hand inches closer to the button.
And that’s when my whole world goes into free fall.
69
There’s a video game I sometimes play called NCAA Football by EA Sports.
In the “Road To Glory” mode, you can flick a trigger on the game controller and enter hyper reality. The action slides into super slow motion so you can see every little detail of the play while you’re in the middle of running it.
This is what happens when I tug back on the trigger to my Glock.
I can see blood arcing in bursts out of Ceepak’s leg, keeping time to the thundering beats of my own amped-up heart.
His father hit him in the femoral artery.
My partner is going to bleed out, right here on the boardwalk, if those paramedics don’t start administering first aid immediately. John Ceepak is going to die shielding his mom, something he has done since he was a teenager. A fitting end for such a brave man? Maybe. But this is not his time. It can’t be.
I won’t let it.
And so I fire at his father when Mr. Ceepak’s hand moves half-an-inch closer to the green button glowing on, dimming off, glowing on, dimming off.
My first round rips across the twenty open feet of air separating us. I swear I can see the slug soaring like a guided missile to its target.
It slams into Mr. Ceepak’s shoulder. Hard.
He flies backward. Looks stunned.
But his liquor-soaked brain has been numbed down to its reptilian stub. It’s fight or flight time. He chooses to fight. He fires his own weapon.
“Down!” someone shouts behind me.
I hear bodies thudding to the floor.
Mr. Ceepak’s bullet whizzes past my head.
Glass shatters.
Christine screams.
I cannot turn around to see if she is okay.
All I can do is line up my next shot.
Mr. Ceepak drops his pistol.
He lunges forward and fights through the pain searing his shoulder to place both hands over that glimmering launch switch. He is ready to kill David Rosen, to make that his final, dying act.
But I kill him first.
My second bullet blows through Mr. Ceepak’s chest.
He glares and snarls at the world one last time.
And then, thank God, Ceepak’s father finally dies.
70
When I am absolutely certain that Mr. Joseph Ceepak has lost the ability to harm anyone else, I whirl around.
Christine is okay. Shocked, but okay.
I can’t say the same thing for the pizza shop’s Coke case. The sliding glass doors are shattered. Foamy orange soda is spewing out of the row of innocent Fanta cans that took a direct hit from Mr. Ceepak’s second bullet.
I hop up and over the counter. Nearly beat the team of paramedics to Ceepak’s side.
They roll him over onto their body board. Mrs. Ceepak is weeping when I help her up off the ground. She nearly faints when she sees the fountain of blood jetting up out of her son’s wounded leg.
Fortunately, Christine came running out of the pizza place right behind me. Officer Getze, too. They gently take Ceepak’s mother by her elbows and guide her away from the horror show. Christine automatically switches into the calming nurse mode I saw in action when that kid was choking on his seafood.
“Let’s move back inside, Mrs. Ceepak,” Christine says, her voice soft and soothing. “Let the paramedics do their job …”
“Johnny?”
“It’s all good, mom,” Ceepak says weakly. And even though his wound must hurt like hell, he manages a small smile for her.
I lean down near his head while the two EMTs apply pressure with a jumbo gauze square to his leg.
“Take it easy, partner.”
Ceepak looks me in the eye.
“Danny … did you … were you able to?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you, my friend.”
Ceepak closes his eyes as all sorts of paper cups and sandwich wrappers and scattered trash start swirling around us. I hear chopper blades thumping and whumping overhead, obliterating poor David Rosen’s cries for help from the peak of the StratosFEAR.
The SWAT team has arrived.
A black-suited ninja rappels down a line.
“What’s our situation?” he screams over the rotor wash.
“Secure,” I say. “We need to medevac this man to Mainland Medical. Trauma unit. Stat.”
“Roger that.”
