Page 38 of Omega’s Fealty

I can see under the bottom of the pile, between the sheet metal and the ground. I watch the boots hit the ground.

They come out spread wide. Half of them go straight for the gangway and up it at a run. The rest aren’t looking at the boat at all. They’re looking at the lot.

A flashlight beam swings across the scrap pile. I put my face in the gravel. The light hits the scrap, missing me. Boots start getting closer.

But then there are headlights. Further back on the access road, more cars are coming.

They roar into the lot, squealing to a stop and spraying gravel before even more men spill out. This time the shouting is in English. Federal agents. They race past the men in the lot and go for the gangway, and by the time they reach it the first group is already aboard.

The original men keep walking the lot.

One of them finds my car. I hear the door. I hear him say something, not in English, and another one answers. The beam goes down to the rear wheel and finds the tape hanging there.

I can’t stay here.

I go.

I’m up off the gravel and along the back of the scrap pile with my body bent double, toward the river. Behind me somebody shouts, one word, and the word isn’t stop.

The first shot goes past my head. I hear it go. I hear it whack into the scrap behind me.

The second pings past my left leg, into the dirt.

The third one finds me.

It goes through the top of my left arm and out. I stagger like somebody has swung a bat at me.

I go sideways into the sheet metal, my feet slipping out from under me.

My head hits something and I’m down.

They’re too close. If I get up now, they’re just going to shoot again and the next shot will be a head shot.

So I lie there and I stay completely still. I am bleeding into the gravel. My arm is hot and wet and the rest of me is going cold. My head is ringing. I keep my eyes shut and my mouth slack. I hold my breath so my chest isn’t moving.

I can hear their steps: two men, coming at a walk. They’re in no hurry now.

Somebody is talking on a radio in a language I don’t understand.

I wait, because they’ll want to be sure. Because that’s what I would do.

The flashlight stops above me.

The light is followed by a boot in my ribs, testing. I let my body go with it, loose, the way a dead man goes.

The boot draws back for a second kick.

I take his ankle and pull with my good arm.

He comes down on top of me and I come up under him. I’m past him before the second one gets his gun up. The second one fires and misses because his friend is in the way.

Then I’m at the edge of the lot where the gravel stops and the concrete lip is. The river flows under it, black and moving.

I don’t think about it.

I go over, letting my body tip into the water.

The cold takes everything.