We crouched before the last side entrance, wasting no time. A part of me knew this venture was insane, but I couldn’t back out now. Not if I wanted to sleep easy at night. It was one follow-up promise I’d made to myself. Might even take down Paz in the doing.
The high rusty door was an emergency exit and looked to have been little used. I applied some putty to the cracks around the edges and alongside the metal ring and wired the pulse cylinder. I hoped the door wasn’t under alarm. We turned and the silent blast jerked the door ajar.
It wasn’t wired. Good thing, otherwise Plan B would have come into effect, and that was a hell of lot messier.
Pazarol’s men were nowhere in sight. They were confident, these thugs, as evidenced by their cocksure posturing and loose-limbed gunwielding. Nobody would try to burgle the very place they called home.
Such conceit was a fortunate occurrence. I knew the workers lived there and it was off shift for the guards, having scoped out their movements in advance. Many of them had left, so only a skeleton detail remained.
We crouched, breathless, in a cramped foyer stacked with row upon row of shelves of old junk and open boxes of dusty uniforms and boots—rejects.
The sewing machines had mostly settled down for the day and I set out for the back of the warehouse, motioning Wren to get to the workers’ stations fast and move the women and boys back toward the side exit we’d breached. Hers was the harder job, I knew, convincing the laborers not to panic, bolt or raise an alarm. Her presence as a woman would command more trust and compliance. I hoped. If not, Plan C.
Keeping low and out of sight, I threaded my way through the many aisles of random equipment where the victims’ daily chores were ever the same: hunched on benches before long tables, cutting, dyeing, sewing the electronic components into fabric, pressing, working the tall, upright mantis-like machines to pump out Paz’s guerrilla wear. I dodged the sound of a guard’s coarse laugh and the murmur of nearby voices, finally to crouch before the fat, double heating pipes running length-wise three feet above the ground at the back of the sweatshop. I’d seen them in the floor layout and memorized the specs back when TK and I’d scoped the joint. Typical rectangular warehouse, complete with storage areas at the sides. I set my canister of gas down underneath them and armed it for thirty seconds. I pressed the mask over my face. The hiss grew as I beetled away, for soon it’d blow and the funland of hell would begin. We’d have seven minutes before the toxic gas spread throughout the compound and rendered the air unbreathable.
When I heard a distinct pop behind me as the canister released, I knew the die was cast. I scrambled back the way I’d come.
Gray clouds of hot steam hissed from the piping area, simulating a burst pipe, obscuring the view. This mix had tear gas in it for added effect. We’d have to get the workers out with speed, otherwise they’d choke to death.
I heard shouts to my right and the thuds of booted feet of big Paz’s guards, converging from their diverse locations. They’d be wondering what was up: a main pipe rupture or thinking the worst, some spontaneous fire. I snuck off in the opposite direction, keeping low between the lanes of dyeing equipment and the presses, blending in with the shadows. Confuse and misdirect; that was the name of the game, for as long as possible while Wren and I got the workers out.
I ran nose to nose with Pazarol and a few of his boys before long in the cleaning area on the way back to join up with Wren: a blur of dark suits, mustachios, Uzi blasters, foul tempers and tongues. I pegged off the first of his entourage, a bewildered bodyguard, his mouth wide and gaping, before answering fire sent me spinning under a worktable.
Shots ricocheted off the shiny metal. I found myself pinned down before the dye vats. One beam nearly clipped me and I jerked away from a whoosh of green fire that nearly grazed my Adam’s apple. Both far too perilously close. Feet scrabbled around me. I shouldered in behind a large vat of toxic green dye, the chemical reek making my eyes water and my throat seize up. My mask had jiggled loose. I fumbled to secure it and shook out the chemical sting from my eyes. The gunmen weren’t equipped with masks, so I sent green dye pouring their way by blasting out the bottom far side of the vat. Soon they were reeling on the ground as the fumes from the dye stung their noses and throats while the more toxic billows of steam crept up on them like snakes through the aisles.
So began a shooting spree in a wild free-for-all that the gambler in me knew was bad odds at five to one. Yet gradually big Paz’s gunmen started to cough and reel back, snarling and cursing.
I slipped out of my hiding spot, my mask snug on my nose now. I picked them off one by one so there’d be no blasting us in the back while we were making our escape.
Pazarol, the fat fuck, lolled in the curling swirls of mist, wiping his eyes, drooling and spitting curses all the way. So, he was here. Bonus. Someone had thrown him a mask, the strap still dangling in his pudgy hands. I kicked the weapon out of his grip and beat him down to the ground with the end of my blaster. I looked down at him with little love.
His priceless expression was one of white-faced surprise. Rusco, a grinning pumpkin man returned from the grave.
“It can’t be! You’re dead!” he choked and sputtered, as
