Chapter 23


The Texans, back at the laundry, had not been that big of a problem. Norm just wished he had not used his last concussion grenade on them. Like typical bullies they had charged right into the alley after him. They never gave any though to things like tactics. Norm could have gunned them all down easily but, what the Texian Legion was very good at was holding grudges when you capped one of their guys. That's why Norm left them rolling in the muck of the alley, in pain. He also kicked Big Ted in the balls for good measure. The guy had chipped the paint on Norm's car once. Well, Texans weren't the only ones that could hold a grudge.

Norm also did not bother following the vehicle that Sally had been taken away in. He already had a good idea where it was heading. As it turned out he was exactly right. They went to the warehouse for a defunct trucking company, once operated by the Texans, and the current location of the moving van that had been used during Danni's shooting.

The place had been easy enough to find. Norm tailed the body guard, Baxter, from the Kingsley estate not long after he paid Hyrum a call. It only made sense that, somehow, the Texans were involved since it was hard to move anything substantial, and usually illegal, without their consent. The single biggest mystery was how it got Roy vaporized and, the only answer that Norm could reach was, he must have found out what it was they were really moving. Norm still had no idea what that was. The only way to find out was to take these guys down. Now that they had Sally, he had little choice about when to do it. It had to be now.

Norm's began with shooting his grenade launcher, which he then discarded, on is way to cover. He had no more use for it since he was now out of ammo. Norm figured, he was paying the price for having forgotten to the buy the fireworks on Family Day, last year. Because of that, Tony and Garcia had almost run through his entire supply of forty-millimeter grenades that they spent most of the night shooting at the buoy out by the station.

Fortunately, the one grenade that Norm had left could do the job he wanted. The guys in the jumpsuits dove for cover when that grenade went off but, it didn't do them much good. The grenade did not hit the ground and go off. Instead, it sailed through the air, the casing flying off as it did, and then spread it's small pay load of mini bombs across the arc of it's flight. They went off just about at head level and sprayed everything beneath them in a shower of lethal pins that ripped through flesh about as efficiently as a steak knife tearing butter. Norm could tell it worked because he managed to empty a magazine on his machinegun, and take down three targets, before they even started returning fire.

That was when things got a little more complicated. At first even the return fire was wild, sporadic, and very light when you considered the hardware these guys were packing. Norm moved from cover to cover and concentrated on the few guys who were actually shooting at him. He finally ran dry of ammunition for the machinegun and tossed it as he slid beneath the customs van. He pulled the two pistols from the holsters on his hips and then slid to the side of the van where he could find more things to shoot at.

That's when he heard the beating that was coming from inside the van. Then he heard a voice that he recognized and it was screaming for all it was worth, "HELP!"

Norm's hairs raised and he yelled back, "Shannon?" He then mumbled to himself, "shit, Barbara's gonna kill me."

The other side was starting to change tactics on Norm. No sooner had he realized who was yelling at him from inside the van than a new volley of fire came flying his way. The weapon making it was a lot louder than those that preceded it. It almost seemed to rip the air apart when they fired it. Norm realized he was now dealing with some kind of, crew served, heavy machinegun. He looked at the pistols in his hand and realized, "I think I'm a little under dressed here."

The only good news, if you could call it that, was the fire was extremely accurate for such a weapon. It had practically chewed up the crates and pallets that Norm had taken cover behind. Despite this, there was not even a single bullet hole in the truck. That meant he had to find some more cover but, "Shannon! Stay put! You'll be safe in there."

Shannon yelled back, "sit and spin Norm! We're sitting on a fucking bomb you jack ass!"

Now, Norm knew exactly why they were being so careful about shooting the van. He decided to use it to his advantage and crawled back to the other side. As it turned out, unfortunately, Norm seemed to be right about why they were not chewing up his new cover. They held their fire when he raised up and yelled back to Shannon, "we? Is Sally in there with you?"

"Yeah I think this is her?"

What the hell did she mean by that? Norm decided to concentrate on the problem at hand. He moved to the back of the truck and took a quick peek around to the back door of it. The machinegun cranked back but, very conservatively. Norm actually managed to even get off a couple of shots of return fire before ducking back behind his cover. Then he moved back to his original position and told Shannon, "what's the bomb look like?"

"Shit!" was all that Shannon replied. Then after he repeating himself the teenager yelled back, "give me a minute ok!"

"Darling we ain't got a minute," Norm yelled back.

"Look Norm," Shannon shouted back, "this isn't easy! I'm a little tied up at the moment!"

"You tell me as soon as you get to it," Norm responded when he realized something else was wrong. Why was it that something else was always wrong! He realized that the bad guys had him pinned down and, seemingly, they had yet to make a move. Another quick peek, that drew even more near misses from the machinegun, confirmed what Norm had already suspected.

"Norm!" His name was followed by a few more beats on the side of the truck. When Norm let her know he was still there she told him what she found, "it's round, kind of like a drink can. It's got this lit ring around the top of it and it's getting shorter!"

Norm grumbled. That sounded about like any military charge you could care to name. He yelled back, "any writing on it?"

"Yeah," she called out, "hang on." A few more seconds of silence went by and Norm suspected they were seconds that none of them had. Then Shannon called back, "ICO-Fifty Two!"

Now Norm knew exactly why the bad guys were keeping their distance. The ICO stood for Incendiary Compound Ordinance and the number was the charge size. The charge itself was not that big but, it did not have to be. If you put that kind of explosive with enough fuel it could make a fire hot enough to melt this entire building in a few short minutes. That made Norm wonder so he asked Shannon, "baby, is there anything else in there with you?"

"Yeah," Shannon replied, "I didn't, like, want to mention this right now but, um, we're sitting on a few million dollars worth of cocaine. I'm guessing it's the designer stuff from the looks of it."

"How the hell do you know…" Norman forgot about that and gulped. The designer stuff wasn't even really cocaine. It was a mixture of all kinds of fancy chemicals that were, on the whole, highly flammable. A truck this size could provide plenty of enough fuel to bring down the entire building and probably then some.

When Norm failed to respond, Shannon did it for him by asking, "that's not good, is it?" When Norm failed to respond again Shannon lashed out with a very command voice, "get your ass in here and untie us, NOW MISTER!"

"Shannon," Norm responded with as much calm as he could muster. He told himself he was doing it for the kid. He lied to himself about the fact that he even needed to lie to himself right now. He also wished like hell he had dreamed up another plan before rushing in here. Maybe this was a stupid idea? Of course, at the same time, both Sally and Shannon might be dead right now if he had waited.

Sure! Norm figured it out. If they lived then he'd lie to everybody and tell them it was just all apart of the plan! If they died, well, it really wasn't going to matter, now was it?

"NORM!" Shannon yelled back at him and made him realize that he had slipped out of reality.

"Look baby," Norm told her. "You're going to have disarm this bomb. That door's locked and we got bad guys out here."

Whatever the teenager said next was not very audible and did not completely penetrate the walls of the truck. Norm stuck his ear to the wall and he was pretty sure he heard wrong. Shannon did not use that kind of language, or, that was going to be Norm's story anyway. Finally she yelled at him, "I'm in high school! I take shop! Not bomb disposal!"

One more time, Norm went and tried both directions of the truck. Each time the machinegun sounded off and cut some fair sized holes in the sheet metal wall of the building. He took a good look at the holes and then he said to himself, "I think Shannon's right. We might be fucked."

When he went back to his space where he could hear her it was obvious the little girl had heard him do it. Now the tone in her voice had completely changed. This time it was very obvious she was crying, "please don't leave me again!"

"Damn," Norm mumbled, "why did she have to go and do that."