Tai Anne Roper 2

by Nicole Sutter

FOR MATURE READERS ONLY

Chapter 29 - "Bullet Time"

Yukari Mei Awai looked out through the blinds that kept Amanda's apartment dark. The sun was just out and she saw that New Yorkers liked to start their work day mighty early, even in Greenwich Village.

She had dressed casual from her suitcase; tight, comfortable jeans, a blue knit turtleneck and sneakers. Her shoulder-holstered Kahr pistol was hanging under her left arm while her Sempai's HKMP-5k machine pistol was slung off her right hip in a cross carry.

"This is sooooooo fuckin' stupid," Amanda the Hacker Queen growled. She was dressed as well in a black PVC minidress with a zip front, matching clunky-heeled, knee boots and artfully tattered black stockings. "Why the fuck do I hafta leave here? This is my home, goddammit! And its safer than any other place in the world!"

"Sempai has her reasons," Yukari replied.

"And what about all my cats?" Amanda picked up a reluctant Maine coon cat the size of a backpack and huggled him.

"You told me they were all wild cats before you moved here," Yukari said. "They'll survive."

"Fuck that. I ain't going!"

"Oh yes you are," Yukari replied. "If I have to tie you up and sling you over my shoulder, you are going."

Amanda put the cat down and went to her fridge. Her computers were still spitting out hardcopy. Enough info to deep-fry Scagnetti, Corder and ISIS.

"You sure about Killian?" Amanda asked.

"That's what Sempai said."

"Dammit." She finished an open jug of apple juice and gobbled a cold egg roll. "Why did he hafta die. He was a pain in the ass... but I liked him."

"Me too." Yukari replied.

"And what about us, Sailor Moon?" Amanda asked.

Yukari looked to her and studied her for a long moment before walking to her and gently kissing her.

"I... think I love you, girl," Amanda whispered to Yukari. She held her tight and kissed her deep until Yukari felt dizzy.

Amanda released her from the fierce embrace. "And... do you love me?"

Yukari licked her lips and drew a breath to answer just as the front door exploded inwards, sawed to pieces by silencered automatic weapons fire.

They came in fast and low, four young men, bearded, smelly and dressed in dark clothes, all carrying Ingram MAC-10 machine pistols fitted with silencered barrel extensions and 120 round 'snail drum' magazines.

The four moved as they continued to fire, ripping apart walls, drapes, windows and furniture. There was almost no noise, except for the muffled ripping sound of the bullets and the clatter of spent brass bouncing off the floor.

Yukari shoved Amanda to the kitchen floor and ducked for cover behind a slender ceiling post in the loft apartment.

Two of the shooters concentrated fire on the post, but only managed to ricochet bullets off the plaster and steel.

Yukari peeked with one eye around one side of the post while bringing the machine pistol up on the other side. The laser-lok sight tracked her to the face of the first man and she blew his head off his shoulders with a loud, three shot burst. Then shooter two got the same.

Shooter three went for something in his pocket. Shooter four kept firing wildly at her but bought three 9mil rounds to the skull for his trouble.

Number three man tossed a grenade two seconds before he died.

Amanda screamed as the roar and concussive blast of the unholy explosion blew a garage-sized hole into her fourth floor apartment, raining plaster, glass and wood out onto Houston Street.

Amanda the Hacker Queen got up, realizing that her cats were all running out the hole to safety, and there was no sign of Yukari.

"Freeze, puta!"

She screamed as a man grabbed her by her hair and yanked her to him, jabbing a stainless magnum revolver into her neck and cocking back the hammer. He yelled something in Spanish at her, but it was too fast and guttural to catch.

More bad guys slipped through the shattered front door. Broken pipes were spraying cold water everywhere, and Amanda could also smell rotten eggs. There was a gas leak.

"Puta! Show yourself, or we kill dese Beech!!!" One of the men screamed. But there was no reply. Amanda looked at the post Yukari had been hiding behind and screamed herself when she saw blood splattered across it.

The man holding Amanda by the hair motioned for two of his people to check out the bedroom. They did, leaving another man standing next to him and another guarding the front door.

The two men eased down the corridor and into Amanda's darkened bedroom. Both men saw the red beam of a laser sight cutting across the room as it worked from right to left and back again.

One of the men tossed a grenade. After the explosion shook the rafters and blew a hole in the floor, they moved in, screaming and firing like wild men into the dark.

At that moment, Yukari Mei Awai slipped from the outer hallway leading around the kitchen and eased up behind the man holding Amanda hostage and the two others.

There are moments in everyone's life when your best is called upon. Scant seconds when an individual either has what it takes to triumph, or be taken down.

This was Yukari's moment.

She raised her small Kahr pistol and shot one man twice in the face, then she swung around and caught the man by the door with three rounds to the chest as he tried to duck away. Yukari dropped to one knee while the man holding Amanda fired the big magnum at where she had been a moment ago. Yukari fired once between Amanda's legs to catch the bad guy in the kneecap.

The two men in the bedroom had moved forward to find a HKMP-5k machine pistol with the laser sight activated still dangling by its sling from the wrought-iron bed post.

Suckahs!

They doubled back to the living room as more pistol shots ring out.

Amanda pulled away. Yukari tracked the bad guy to the floor, still shooting. She saw the two others racing from the bedroom the moment she fired her last shot and locked the slide open.

She dropped the clip, snapped in a loaded mag and released the slide before the spent clip even hit the floor.

There was no time to take cover, no time to do anything except line up your targets and bang away at them with every bullet you had.

And when it was over two seconds later, Yukari Mei Awai was still standing.

Yukari turned in a tight circle, snapping her last loaded mag into her pistol. No more badguys. Just nine dead bodies.

"Amanda-chan!" she called.

"Y-yeeeeesh..."

"Let's beat feet, darling."

***

Yukari snatched up a MAC-10 and some loaded snail-drum magazines and waited by the front door for Amanda, who was screwing around with her computers.

"Amanda-chan!" Yukari shouted. "We gotta boogie!"

"On my way!" Amanda finished tapping something into her last operational computer and then shut it down. She grabbed a satchel of disks and hardcopy and slung it over her shoulder, running to Yukari's side.

"Ready!" she panted.

"Yokai!" Yukari looked at her. "Stay tight by me and do as I say, when I say it... and we get to live happily ever after."

"Promise?"

Yukari kissed her. "Promise. Now move ass."

***

Detective Sergeant Sal Spinelli and his sometimes partner and cohort in crime Detective 2nd Gary DeAngelo waited in the alleyway off Houston for the Cuban hitters to come rushing out.

Both cops were dressed in civvies, but also wore heavy blue kevlar vests with NYPD stenciled on the front and back. Both cops also carried Ithaca pumpguns loaded with .12 gauge rifled slugs.

After hearing gunshots and two explosions, both cops were surprised when only one of crew stumbled out of the rear of the building.

"Hey, Sanchez! Que paso?" Spinelli shouted.

Sanchez looked wild-eyed at Spinelli and dropped the MAC-10 in his hands. "No mas!" he screamed. "No mas!"

"Whatever you say, asshole." Spinelli lowered the shotgun and blew the Cuban in half with two booming blasts.

***

"Hold up." Yukari and Amanda stopped on the second floor landing as they heard the shotgun blasts.

"Cops?" Amanda asked.

"Maybe." Yukari looked at her. "Stay close."

They made it down to the first floor landing as another explosion ripped apart the fourth floor, leaving a raging fire that started licking down the stairwell. The big Maine coon cat that Amanda had been holding earlier came flying down the stairs with singed fur and stayed huddled by her ankles, still smoking and plaintifully meowing.

Amanda picked up the cat and hugged it.

"Do we really need the cat?" Yukari asked.

Amanda just looked at her and hugged the cat tighter.

"Okeeeeeee... That gas leak finally blew," Yukari said. Thick smoke was already filling the stairwell. "We don't have a choice now."

She kicked back the steel fire door to the alleyway and peeked out. Nothing. The two dumpsters were still on the other side of the alley and Houston Street beckened from down the way.

"We're goin' for the dumpsters!" Yukari shouted. Amanda nodded, clutching the cat for dear life. "Stay right behind me!"

Yukari and Amanda darted across the alley and behind the overflowing dumpsters. Amanda stopped as she noticed an unmarked cop car with a lightbar flashing on the dash parked at the corner of the alleyway.

"Amanda-chan?" Yukari turned, realizing she wasn't behind her.

Amanda the Hacker Queen ran up the alley, spotting a plainclothes cop with a shotgun and a NYPD bulletproof vest standing over the body of a dead badguy.

"Hey, officer!" Amanda shouted. He looked up at her, and she suddenly recognized his face. It was Detective Sergeant Sal Spinelli, the cop on the pad to Scagnetti who had framed Sue Kaminsky for the Plaza murders.

Spinelli grinned at her and used a black gloved hand to pick up the MAC-10 that the dead badguy had dropped.

Amanda the Hacker Queen had time for only one thing, and that was to toss the cat in her arms to the other side of the alley while Spinelli emptied the clip into her and rendered Amanda to bloody pieces from right hip to left shoulder.

"Gotcha, bitch!" He dropped the MAC-10 by the dead badguy again and admired his handiwork. The lil pale goth girlie was cut in two and splattered all over the dumpster and the pavement.

Yukari Mei Awai slipped around the second dumpster as Spinelli strode to the body to retrieve the bloody satchel she had carried. His partner Gary DeAngelo spotted her first and tried bringing his shotgun to bear, but Yukari got him first.

She aimed for the center of his chest and cut loose on full auto. The bullets hammered DeAngelo's kevlar vest and pinned him to a brick wall. Yukari let the recoil ride the machine pistol up in her hand until the spray of bullets split his skull in two.

Spinelli turned to find himself already staring down the smoking barrel of Yukari's MAC-10. He knew this little dink bitch wasn't part of the dead Miami crew, so that made her a survivor of their hit, who had just killed his partner and now had a 9mil streetsweeper aimed at him.

His shotgun was in his left hand and his service piece was still holstered off his right hip. He smiled and tried to play the goodguy for once.

"Hey, babe!" He dropped the shotgun and raised his hands. "New York Police! Don't shoot!"

He watched her eyes as they flicked over to the body of the dead goth girl and back to him. They looked like dark, polished stones.

"Now lissen..."

She emptied the rest of the clip into him, knocking Spinelli off his feet and down the alley a good twenty feet until he lay in a bloody, still heap.

Yukari dropped the empty MAC-10 and walked to the shattered body of Amanda. She went to her knees and let the tears come. Amanda looked pale as a ghost but her gray eyes were still open and staring. The big cat she had carried in her arms was sitting beside her, waiting.

"Gomen nasai, Amanda-chan." Yukari placed her hand – still wet with her own tears – and gently closed Amanda's eyes, repeating the simple Taoist Prayer of the Dead that her mother had taught her.

"New York Police! Freeze! Don't move, you fuckin' bitch!!!"

Yukari turned and looked anyway. It was the police. Two blue and white cruisers with flashing lightbars had come up the alley, with four excited uniformed cops all with drawn pistols aimed right at her.

Yukari sniffled and raised her hands. "Don't shoot! I'm a police officer!" she shouted. "I have credentials in my purse!"

They rushed her anyway and grabbed at her just like on Cops, yelling and screaming like maniacs even after they had pulled her arms behind her back and used plastic cord ties at her elbows and wrists.

"I have a gun!" One yelled triumphantly after he yanked her service piece out from under her left arm. They slammed Yukari into the front grill of the the parked RMP cruiser, knocking the breath out of her.

"What the fuck kinda badge is this, bitch?" another demanded as he looked over her shield and ID.

"Metro Tokyo Police!" she gasped back. "I am Officer P-2 Yukari Mei Awai... currently on assignment with the ICPO..."

"I see pee, what?" another demanded.

"International Criminal Police Organization!" she shouted. "Interpol, you dumbass motherfuckers! Chiksho, kusottare!"

"Who knows you're here, slope?" The first cop shouted, spraying spittle in her face.

"The FBI! My partner is Detective Chief Inspector Qwan, also with Interpol!" She yanked and pulled at her corded arms to no avail. "Now lemme go! Bakayaros!"

The four cops crowding around her backed off to let someone else through.

"Korrrrrah!" Yukari gasped first in surprise and then in anger. Sal Spinelli was still alive. He was also a bloody damn mess, but he was alive.

He wasn't Superman and he wasn't a zombie either. He was just goddamned lucky that the bullets Yukari had hosed him down with had mostly struck his kevlar vest, although he had nasty wounds in both forearms, his right shoulder and his left ear was blown clean off.

"Goddamn dink cunt!" he screamed at her. "You shot me to fuckin' pieces!"

"Kso, bakayaro! Kusottare!" Yukari screamed back, even with the other cops holding her back she still surged toward him. "You killed Amanda! And I will fuckin' kill you, Korrrah!"

She lashed out with a solid kick to his balls that connected hard. Spinelli screamed and sank to the pavement while the four big, brave cops surrounded and beat the stuffing out of Yukari.

They didn't stop until she was on the ground unconscious and the sound of approaching sirens were filling the early morning air.

"Awwwww... fuck!" one of cops turned to Spinelli. "The goddamn FD is gonna be here soon! We gotta get this fuckin' cunt outta here, Sal!"

"Yeah yeah..." Spinelli got up to his feet, still with the wobbles. "Stick her inna trunk and get her the fuck outta here. I'll deal with the fallout."

"You want me to do her and drop her inna river?" another cop asked.

"Not yet," Spinelli said. "If she is connected to that fuckin' Qwan bitch then we need her breathing. I gotta get hold of my peeps and see what the fuck is the 411. Just get the bitch the fuck outta here and I'll contact you on a cell."

The cops bundled Yukari Mei Awai up into the trunk of one of the RMP cruisers, being careful to tightly bind her at ankles and knees with cord ties and to gag her mouth with a wad of filthy cloth and some duct tape. Then two of the cops took off in the RMP like a bat out of hell, with the siren wailing out onto Bleeker Street.

Sal Spinelli sank to the pavement, looking over his wounds he realized that he was now missing the two last fingers on his left hand.

"Goddamn lil' cunt!" He wheezed. He swore when this was all over he as going to cut off that dink bitch's fingers and feed 'em to her.

Even with some missing fingers, Spinelli still managed to get his cellphone out and call Linda Hansen.

 

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