The Midnight Club_ A Novel - James Patterson [3]
Through the trees the moon had cast everything in a pattern of strange black and white shapes.
“Hey, detectives! Big fucking surprise, huh?”
A voice suddenly boomed.
“Hey!…Over here!”
More gruff voices came from the opposite side of the narrow street. Several men were hiding in the darkness.
“No! Over here, cocksuckers!”
A row of blinding white floodlights went on. Bright crisscrossing lights bloomed in every direction.
Then heavy gunfire exploded from both sides of the street; a deadly commotion of noise and blazing light commenced on signal.
“Get down. Everybody get down!” Stefanovitch yelled as he pressed the safety, pumped his own shotgun, and felt his body shift into automatic.
“Get down!” he screamed as he fired at the beaming lights. “Everybody, down!”
5
ALL OVER THE STREET there was pandemonium. Detectives were screaming and cursing. Stefanovitch finally dropped on his stomach. He was gasping for breath. He had a flashing thought about Anna: the idea of never seeing her again.
He pressed his body against the freezing cold concrete. He didn’t know whether he’d been hit or not. He genuinely didn’t know. The odors of motor oil and gasoline stuffed his nose.
Down on his stomach, Stefanovitch wiggled until he was underneath the rear end of a parked car. He ripped his hands and knees as he struggled forward. Where the hell was the backup? What could he do now?
He made it to a second parked car. As he did, his head cracked against the undercarriage. He cursed. His lungs ached horribly. The submachine guns kept giving fire.
For a moment, he was hidden under a third parked car.
He wondered if he should stay there. The auto’s body was so low that his face scraped the ground. His mind screamed.
A fourth car was parked up tightly against the third vehicle, cheek to cheek. He kept straining to hear the sound of approaching police sirens.
Nothing. No one in the neighborhood had called the police.
He kept moving from parked car to car. Away from the killers and the massacre. Did they know where he was? Had anyone seen him?
He stopped counting how many cars he’d gone under. He was numb all over from the cold.
The last parked car was anchored at the corner of Ocean View. The attackers’ voices were fading down the street. He needed a breath, before he got up and tried to run.
Stefanovitch finally pushed himself from underneath the last car.
Then he ran as fast as he could, sprinting to his left.
He was numb and sweaty-cold, so otherworldly and out of it. He was running, though, and nobody was going to catch him. He zigzagged as he went, feeling like a ground missile released from its cramped vault.
Everything was unreal. His feet had never struck against the pavement quite like this before. His breathing was labored and very painful.
Just keep running.
It was a disembodied thought. It held him together.
Nothing else was important.
He finally saw the side street where he and his men had parked their cars. The cars, Mustangs and Camaros, Stingrays, BMWs, were sitting up ahead, silent and empty.
Stefanovitch rounded the corner onto Florida Street. He saw his black van. Call for help, his mind screamed.
He fumbled to get the keys out of his pocket as he ran. Finally, a siren screeched in the distance.
The wind and sweat-soaked clothes were biting cold against his skin. His hair threw off water.
Five yards from the van a shotgun thundered loudly in his ears. It went off directly behind him. The explosion reverberated against the bone of Stefanovitch’s skull. It rattled his insides.
The first shotgun blast passed clearly through his right side. It seemed so simple to say, to think—shot in the side.
The first hit turned John Stefanovitch around, the way a caroming, speeding truck would have, the way a grown person can easily manhandle a small child.
The second shotgun blast exploded almost on top of the first brutal assault. The blast shattered the vertebrae on the left side of Stefanovitch’s spinal column. A jagged shard of bone broke through the flesh, like antlers