Page 35 of Lone Wolf

Hundreds of makeshift abodes were scattered along a graveled plain hemmed in by train tracks and the concrete slope of the drought-dry Los Angeles River. Soiled sleeping bags, scorched hot plates, a half-naked man nattering to himself. Trash clogged the makeshift alleys between homes. Mounds of rags and shattered bottles and the high hard reek of grain alcohol. Pots and pans dangled from a clothesline, jangling idiophonically.

Multiple officers had left their cars in pursuit, tracing the ripple of Evan’s wake. Barreling down a crammed aisle, he kicked out tent pegs, makeshift domiciles flapping madly behind him, tangling up some of the responders. He cut through a circle of homeless guys sharing a bottle. As one lifted it to his lips, Evan grabbed it and slapped it into the hand of another without slowing. The men turned on one another, yelling and shoving, and he switched direction hard, plunging through a cabana of burlap stretched over a frame jerry-rigged from unfurled Hula-Hoops. The woman inside, ensconced in a beanbag, gummed at a pizza crust, milky eyes taking no notice.

He kept on in a crouched jog, keeping his head low, reading the river of human bodies behind him, the eddies of mayhem, cops flickering into view behind hung sheets, bucking and shouting.

Way at the edge of his peripheral vision, no more than twenty meters away, something drew his focus.

A still form in the roiling midst. The sight brought him up short.

The Wolf, having shed her balaclava and sniper rifle, stood in a small clearing. The breeze riffled her white-blond hair. A clean white bandage, miraculously discreet, swathed her right ear. She stood apart from the commotion all around, distinct from the shadows and clutter between them, bathed in a fall of light that turned her luminescent.

A ripple of her arms and then she was aiming a handgun at his head. Deep blue polished to a near mirror finish. The glint of gold at the trigger and hammer gave it away even at distance as a Manurhin MR73 Gendarmerie, the finest and most expensive revolver ever produced.

Before he could react, she fired.

21

Checkmate

Evan could do nothing more than flinch.

But the Wolf’s shot clipped a pan dangling from a clothesline between them, the spark like a needle to the eye, the ping audible even above the madding crowd. The pan rotated like a spun top, giving Evan a strobing view of her porcelain-smooth face.

There and gone. There and gone. Not a ripple of emotion or anything else.

Panicked from the shot, civilians darted into the line of fire. Evan had Moonden’s service weapon drawn and aimed, though it was no match for the Wolf’s $3,600 revolver across the fray. People streamed between them, the Wolf whipping into view like someone glimpsed across a platform between the cars of a passing train.

Behind Evan, cops bulled through the crowd, catching up. Civilians clogged the line of sight.

There was no safe shot.

But the Wolf firmed her grip. And fired.

The round clipped the shoulder of a homeless man running by, spraying a fan of scarlet, and then hammered the pan again. The pan flew back, almost taking Evan’s head off.

He slammed down to safety, concrete hard against his chest and chin. Over the din he heard the wounded man writhing and screaming.

In the tent across from Evan, a wild woman huffing spray-paint fumes from a paper bag stared at him with red rodent eyes. Crawling forward, Evan plucked the spray-paint can from her side and ran.

Cops closing in now, trampling tents and kicking through mounds of refuse, hot on the scent. Darting through makeshift lanes between tents, Evan came upon a circle of bearded men warming their hands around an oil drum burning refuse. He tossed the spray-paint can into the flames and said, “Run.”

They scattered.

He sprinted on.

Ten meters, fifteen, and then—boom!—the spray-paint can detonated, the oil drum compounding the metallic scream in its belly. A wave of cops fell back, stumbling.

A rise in the ground bucked Evan above the fray for a moment, and he saw the Wolf thirty meters away, hands in her pockets, strolling swiftly. She glanced over, their eyes locking, her gun hand starting to pull from her pocket. But they both sensed a stampede behind her—SWAT sweeping in from the park, dark uniforms carving through the tents behind her like sharks.

Evan surged over the rise, dropped back out of view, doubled back a few steps, and cut into an even denser stretch of improvised housing.

Softening his footfall, he veered up a narrowing alley, staying low and alert, head on a pivot. Up ahead, a patrolman’s shadow fluttered to life, visible through a wall of hung sheets. Pistol drawn. A black outline stalking.

Evan matched him for several steps, tracking him slowly and silently, separated only by the thin sheets. White linen gave way to maroon cotton, the shadow rippling. Rounding the corner, Evan seized the cop from behind, twisting his wrist, threading his own finger atop the cop’s through the trigger guard. They swayed together, the gun discharging twice into the ground.

Grunting, straining, they spun in a violent dance, Evan controlling the arm. Up the narrow lane the Wolf floated back into view. Framed by tents on either side, she kept her hands in her pockets, the picture of innocence amid the clamor.

Then her hands blurred and her gun was out and she fired.