The Renegades Read Free Page B

boxes rose a push-up bench with two hundred pounds on the barbell. Strong boys, thought Hood. The walls had posters of Suge Knight and Tupac, Mary Blige and Ludacris, Snipes as Blade, Smith as Ali, and the old Death Row Records logo with the masked guy strapped into the electric chair.
    Fernandez went to the closet, leaned in and sniffed at something. Jacquilla stared at him.
    “Keenan and Kelvin drive to get the take-out?” asked Strummer. “Or did they walk?”
    “They took my car, soon as I got home.”
    “An hour and a half to get take-out?”
    She tried to glare again at Strummer, but Hood saw something go out of her. “It might be late.”
    “Yeah, I’ll bet it might be,” said Strummer. “You don’t even know where they are, do you?”
    “Out there. In the wind.”
    Strummer shook his head and sighed. “We’ll be in touch. Come on, Al. I’ve seen enough.”
    Laws and Hood thanked Jacquilla on their way out and she slammed the door behind them. Strummer gunned the van down Storybook.
    “Idiots,” said Laws.
    Hood let himself into the cruiser. As Laws settled in, Hood looked out at the swaying peppertree and wondered how long Keenan and Kelvin would be out tonight. Terry closed his door.
    Hood turned the key and got nothing.
    Dead battery, thought Hood.
    “Let’s take a look,” said Laws.
    Hood was feeling for the Interceptor’s hood release when he saw the windswept swaying of the peppertree become a different kind of motion—something thicker, concentrated and purposeful.
    Someone coming.
    Someone stopping in front of the car, on Laws’s side.
    Black man. Detroit Tigers hoodie. Sunglasses, red bandana worn pirate style, shiny black gloves. Vaguely familiar. And an M249 SAW machine gun pointed at Laws.
    Hood was reaching for his weapon when the machine gun rattled and the windshield shattered and Laws screamed. Hood shouldered open the door and rolled into the street as the bullets whapped into metal and flesh. Then he heard a metallic clang and a pause in the volley, so he rose into a shooter’s crouch just as another spray of bullets cracked into the door right in front of him and something hot hit his face. He scrambled around the back of the car and came up again with his sidearm in both hands but the shooter was already midair, vaulting a fence into someone’s backyard. Behind the shooter Hood saw a house light go on and a face in the window and he held fire, cursing as he ran around to the driver’s side of the cruiser.
    He pulled Terry flat to the seat and felt his neck for a pulse. Nothing. A car engine came to life one block over. Hood looked down at Terry’s ragged body then grabbed the radio handset and called in the officer down.
    Then he broke out the shotgun and ran to the street corner, just fifty yards away. But the car was gone and there was only wind whistling against a light pole, and the lights coming on in the houses, and the deafening report of his heart.
    Hood ran back to the cruiser and hit the flashers. He stood looking down at Laws, then covered him with his duty jacket. He made a promise. The cold hit his back and he felt the sharp pain in his right cheek. He wiped away the blood and looked in the sideview mirror and saw the dark shard of metal, or perhaps lead, hooked into his skin.
    By then the residents were gathering in the street, wrapped in jackets and robes. Hood told them a deputy had been shot to death and the gunman was still out there, go back inside and stay safe. A few of them did this, but most of them stood staring at the bullet-riddled radio car as if hypnotized by the flashing lights. Hood saw the steam coming from their mouths and noses and he kept them away from the car and his dead partner, shivering as he waited for help.

2
     
     
    Hood tried to talk to the homicide detectives at the scene, but two men emerged from the darkness, badged the dicks and said they were part of the Internal Affairs “shoot unit” and this was theirs.
    The detectives