The Absolver- Vienna, page 23
part #1 of Saint Michael Thriller Series
Unaffected by the glancing strike, the African tried to reach his left arm around Michael’s torso, just as Michael pushed the gun farther away to his left and swung a right elbow back into the man’s already-broken nose. Blood splattered from the widened injury and the driver stepped back, but still didn’t release the gun.
thud
The driver’s back struck the room’s curtains and the glass wall only inches behind them. He rage-screamed and pushed hard off the glass before Michael could launch another strike.
“AAAUUUUUGHHHH!!”
As the African pushed him backward, Michael could barely hear his scream over the still-constant ringing. Michael grabbed the left sleeve of the man’s uniform shirt to prevent an attack as he stepped backward and focused on keeping control of the opponent’s gun with his left hand. He misstepped and fell, so the driver immediately tripped and landed on top of Michael as his back struck the tile floor and his head landed against the cabinets in the center of the room.
Briefly dazed by the head strike, Michael stayed committed to controlling the gun. He looked up just as the African came down hard with a left strike aimed at his exposed head and face. With his left hand locked on the gun, Michael brought his right hand up to defend himself, but he only succeeded in slowing the series of frantic, incoming blows. As the fight continued, Michael’s head, right arm, and shoulder repeatedly struck the cabinet.
smack
Michael quickly glanced to his right, to the sound, and saw König’s antidote kit had fallen off the countertop above them. Fuck! Gotta move! The fentanyl bag!!
The African leaned back and brought his left hand up high to deliver a devastating blow, so Michael sent a quick right jab into the front of his momentarily exposed throat. After striking the soft tissue with all his available might, Michael reached past the man’s throat and hooked the driver’s neck with his right hand. He consciously locked the African’s gun hand to his left hip, pushed up off his left leg, and bucked his hips as he pulled the opponent’s neck and head down and to his right. With all the man’s weight that far above his hips and Michael’s upward force, the African easily flew forward and rolled onto his back next to the cabinet and countertop. Michael used his own momentum to chase the man and landed on top of him in a mount.
With all his previous Brazilian Jujitsu and ground fighting experience, Michael reflexively spread his hips and feet out wide and lowered his center of gravity to prevent the driver from using the same technique to easily roll him back over. With his base secured and the contested gun still held tight in his left hand, Michael rained down hard right hammer-fists onto the driver’s sternum, neck, face, and throat, some of which landed, others were deflected by the man’s flailing left arm.
Amid the frantic chaos, Michael’s left hand slipped on the driver’s sweaty skin, but stayed clutched on his wrist. His opponent immediately acted on the advantage and pulled the gun down to his pocket.
Michael understood the driver wanted to use his clothes to rack the slide and chamber a fresh bullet. No! No! He simultaneously had to push the gun out to his left, away from the driver’s stout uniform pants and belt, maintain a broad base to keep himself from getting rolled, and launch distractionary blows with his right hand. All while somehow recovering his grip on the accessible and now-dangerous gun. Panic crept into Michael’s psyche as the driver grew stronger and more determined beneath him. Michael recognized their relative body mechanics benefitted his opponent, and he couldn’t stay in that position much longer. He looked at the gun and saw his adversary had almost brought it back to his pocket. All he’s gotta do is catch the back sights—
chckchck
As soon as Michael felt the slide rack, he pulled the gunman’s wrist to his left ribcage, firmly held it against himself, and dropped his head and chest down tight against the man who desperately wished to murder him.
BOOMBOOM BOOM BOOM BOOMBOOM
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
The shots further deafened Michael and escalated the ringing to intolerable heights. He couldn’t hear anything else and prayed the driver had run the gun dry. Fearing he’d been hit by the small caliber rounds and might soon bleed out, Michael released the driver’s right hand. He used both his arms to rain down a desperate, rage-fueled flurry of strikes targeted at his adversary’s head, face, and throat with all the repeated and skull-crushing blows he could muster.
“AAAAAUUUUUGGGGHHH!!!!!!!”
Even though he screamed with all his rage as he pummeled the driver, Michael could barely hear himself over the high-pitched ringing. He didn’t stop his counterattack until the African lay motionless beneath him. Michael looked down at the blood-covered, unconscious man and dropped his hands. Getting up to his feet required more effort than ever before in his life. He clumsily stumbled backward several steps, away from the felled opponent and bent over at his waist, hands on his knees, exhausted. A quick check confirmed the tranquilizer gun, miraculously, was still under his cassock. Now that I can get to it, I don’t need the damned thing…
Grateful to be alive, Michael knew he shouldn’t be. He’d committed three critical errors from the very beginning of the fight. I assumed the driver wasn’t willing to kill me, I wanted to avoid harming him, and, then I brought fists to a gunfight. I oughta be D-R-T…Dead Right There, right next to König. Michael silently swore at his mistakes and tried to catch his breath. A thin white plume fell through the air before him and captivated his focus. He looked up to see dozens of white trails slowly descending to the floor like baby powder. Goddammit, König might get two more O-D victims outta this…
FIFTY-NINE
February 19, 5:19PM.
König’s Office. Vienna, Austria.
Panic replaced Michael’s momentary relief at surviving his own attempted murder and, for the moment, having apparently won the fight. As plumes of white powder fell through the air all around him, Michael stumbled back away from the center cabinets. He looked at the narcotics bags and immediately understood the driver had shot through them. All three of them. His dark blue coveralls, the ones he’d worn to conceal his cassock and hung on the countertop when König revived, were now heavily contaminated and unusable. The toxic, unknown mix of powdered narcotics might still take his life, and Michael felt greater terror than when he’d just been shot at. Not gonna die here, not like this, and now I’ve gotta escape in a bloody, drug-soiled mass garb without drawing too much attention.
He staggered away and fell over backward near the remnants of the bookcase door. Michael held his breath for a moment and got up on all fours, but he was still winded from the life-or-death struggle and couldn’t stop himself from taking in the contaminated air. He kept his face low and scanned the room for his messenger bag, the one he’d brought from the hotel earlier that afternoon. Michael realized he actually felt the tile floor, and he looked at his hands. The medical exam gloves he’d started the fight in had been shredded. Several pieces of their nitrile material were missing, cast somewhere about the room and collecting a deadly toxic mix at that very moment. I can’t leave them here, they’re covered in my prints and D-N-A, but they’re probably also contaminated with dope. He took the useless remnants off, and again scanned for his bag.
The all-out fight had wrecked the once-pristine room. Wood shards and splinters lay strewn across the floor. Several money bags had fallen from the cabinet shelves behind him and spilled banded ten-thousand-euro stacks on the floor, which now collected a growing layer of drug powder. That damned syringe is still laying around here somewhere. König's corpse had somehow been pushed onto its left side with his back propped up against the glass wall. He still wore Michael’s soft restraints and was obviously dead. König’s head unnaturally hung to the left, and a frothy white foam leaked from his open mouth onto the tile floor. No spark remained in the artificially blue eyes.
There! Michael lurched forward on his hands and knees, grabbed the bag from just above König’s head, and urgently inventoried its content. I still have two Naloxone kits. Might not be enough, but it’s a start to get out of here. I might have five minutes to get help, maybe less if that shit was pure. Michael looked at König and realized he had to take the restraints with him. That’s the best piece of forensic evidence in here. If the coroners get their hands on one of those, they can use that to tie all the absolutions together all across the globe. Even though he used far less care in taking the straps off than he had in putting them on, he still lost a precious minute retrieving his evidence and stuffing it into his bag.
Michael stepped out into the main office, closed his messenger bag over the straps, and started to leave before his conscience stopped him cold. I can’t leave, not yet.
Grabbing a lungful of fresh air, he hurried back into the storage room and kicked the African’s empty, discarded pistol to the far corner of the floor. Michael grabbed his adversary’s right foot and urgently dragged him out into the middle of the office. I can’t intentionally leave him to die, nor can I allow the local cops to run into a hazmat scene that might kill them, too. No idea if they carry antidote kits like the cops back home. Michael stopped at Koenig’s desk and grabbed his cell phone. With another deep, relatively fresh breath, he stepped back inside and held its fingerprint reader to König’s right index finger. The phone unlocked and he retreated back into the office. As he passed by the felled African, Michael kicked hard at the bottom of his left shoe. “Hey! Wake up! You lost, by the way!”
He paused long enough to see that the man moaned and moved slightly while Michael urgently shook out his cassock as best he could. Gotta try to leave all the contamination in one place. A quick look at his watch confirmed it still worked. As he strode out into the hall, he started its stopwatch function. I think I feel okay right now, but it’s hard to know what’s adrenaline, what’s panic, and what’s gonna change. I don’t even know that I’m not shot all to shit…
Distant sirens approached from somewhere outside the building, so Michael turned left in the hallway and walked toward the main entrance. It’s farther from my hotel room and safety, but it’s also the farthest from the police station on the other side of the building. He dialed the local emergency phone number, the equivalent of 911, and quickly assessed his ethical and Biblical obligations to König and the African. Neither of them confessed anything to me, so I can’t break that vow, as long as I don’t disclose anything that Father Dietrich told me in confession, I can say anything. The bigger concern is that I’ll be recorded and this will be one of Austria’s most public murder investigations this year, maybe this decade. John’s gonna go apeshit about the publicity.
“Was ist dein Notfall?”
Michael didn’t understand the exact question the female dispatcher posed, but he got the gist. He spoke in a very controlled, stilted voice despite his internal chaos. “Send police to König International in the Tourist Information Center. The office is contaminated with fentanyl and there is at least one body inside. Exercise caution and have medical help ready.”
“Uhm, okay, sir, your name, please?”
Michael paused, having no preplanned answer. “Keep your officers safe. I’m sorry.” He ended the call, entered a stairwell, and hustled down to the landing below. When he stepped out into the lobby a few moments later, he turned left and veered toward the service entrance and away from the security cameras that faced the main entrance. Michael turned the phone off, removed its battery, and divided the pieces between his two hip pockets.
As he pushed the door open and stepped out onto the sidewalk, Michael saw the late winter sun was already setting, and little ambient light remained. Dense traffic on Operngasse was at a near-stop. The sidewalks teemed with local, well-dressed pedestrians and tourists, all huddled against the cold and a lightly blowing snow. Inbound sirens grew closer, and a traffic cop walked over from the Royal Opera House. He didn’t show interest in Michael. It won’t take the other cops long to flood the area. There must be a performance tonight at the—
SMASH
Despite the continued ringing, Michael heard the distant, overhead impact and looked up and to his left. One of König’s heavy, metal-framed chairs fell toward the sidewalk amid a shower of broken glass. Pedestrians fled away from its apparent destination.
The chair landed with a loud crash and bounced into a small crowd that didn’t move in time. Michael looked back at the window and saw the African peering out. The man leaned far over, with his waist just barely inside the glass remnants. His adversary scanned the sidewalk, apparently searching for Michael. That guy’s in a lot more trouble than I am. Maybe.
A quick scan revealed everyone else was engrossed by the African, so Michael nonchalantly walked right, away from the crime scene and the one man who could identify him. Every cop in the area’s headed here by now, with all those shots ringing out right at quitting time. He looked down at his watch. 0:02:13…0:02:14…
As Michael pressed onward, away from the scene and to the far side of the Royal Opera House, two Hispanic males parked in the Tourist Information Center loading zone caught his attention. Both had extensive face and neck tattoos, and Michael immediately understood who they were. MS13, I expected to see those assholes somewhere along the way. They can’t be here by coincidence. He saw the African’s antics had captivated their attention. Are they competitors, conspirators, or an aspiring rip-crew? Michael briefly cursed at himself for not grabbing the driver’s cell phone, as well, but, in light of the risk he’d taken to avoid carrying that man’s fate on his conscience, he easily dismissed the oversight.
As Michael closed the distance to the gangsters, he thought they both simultaneously looked angry and nervous, as though unsure what they needed to do. They clearly wanna resort to violence. One of them spoke frantically on a cell phone. Despite his fluency in Spanish, Michael only caught intermittent snippets of the fast conversation. The second gangster glanced at him, but immediately returned his attention to the chaotic scene.
After passing by, Michael looked back as the sirens closed in. Both Hispanic gangsters fled toward an older Renault sedan parked nearby. Good decision boys. Live to plunder another day.
Michael reassured himself that the worst was behind him. I got away from the scene. I have no forensic or identification data in any European database. And, the most powerful of all, I can be on a private flight out of here in a few hours. All I have to do now is live long enough to board that plane. He turned left and strode through the crosswalk on Operngasse, intent on walking around the east side of the Royal Opera House away from the Tourist Information Center.
Michael stepped up onto the tall sidewalk and nearly lost his balance. His legs were unexpectedly weak, and he felt dizzy. Stay calm, there’s still too many people around, it’s too crowded. Just, stay, upright. Michael pressed on, but realized he couldn’t just walk through the crowds streaming around the Royal Opera House and its interior café. If I’m contaminated with fentanyl, I can’t let anyone else touch me, or my clothes. I can’t be responsible for harming anyone else, no matter how much I need to blend in and disappear right now.
Michael had to slow his pace and very deliberately walk out on the edge of the asphalt street to avoid colliding with anyone. I don’t know what’s causing this, could be any number of things, not all of them devastating. He glanced back at his watch.
0:05:14…0:05:15…
Well, right on time if I am overdosing. Scanning the landscape ahead, he found nowhere that he could privately administer the Naloxone injector. I have to make it around the corner, I have to get out of sight, I, have to, get away. Just, stay, upright.
Michael turned left again, finally on the east side of the Opera House. The throngs dissipated slightly, and he stumbled toward a low wall that surrounded a large tiered concrete fountain at the southeast corner of the building. Leaning on the wall, Michael looked at Hotel Sacher, which now stood only one long block ahead of him. He scanned the crowd and saw that no one looked at him suspiciously or seemed to be aware of what had happened on the other side of the block. The increasing volume of sirens made his head pound. The hotel’s right there, but I’ll never make it.
Michael sat on the wall and rummaged through his messenger bag. The restraints spilled out onto the ground, which inspired curious glances from several passersby. Just wait’ll they call in my description...send cops to stop an exorcism. That’ll be a fun, to explain. Shoulda thoughta that, before. Despite their evidentiary value to imprison him, the straps became his second priority. Can’t arrest a corpse…
Panic again welled up inside Michael’s chest and throat. Can’t wait, any longer. Where, the hell, did I leave it... He rummaged through the bag again but still didn’t find the injectors. Feeling his time run out, Michael dumped the bag’s contents on the ground and sat down among them. His vision blurred and he lost dexterity in his hands. Come on, smooth, is, smooth...
He finally recognized the blue-and-white Zippo-sized injector. As calmly as possible, he pressed the device against his left thigh as hard as he could.
thunk
The injector plunged four pre-loaded syringes deep into his quadricep. The sharp pain paled in comparison to the fear of succumbing to an opioid overdose. Can’t let my parents find out I died in the street with no chance to explain any of this! Michael breathed deep and waited. Only seconds later, his mind and body suddenly emerged from the strangling fog, like he’d just been pulled up from drowning waters.
For a moment, Michael sat in amazement and looked around. His vision had cleared, he was no longer dizzy, and his panic had lessened. Despite his rational understanding that Naloxone instantly knocked all opioid compounds off his CNS receptors, Michael had never experienced the sudden resurrection. Seen it in the back of a few ambulances over the years, but I’ve never been on this side of it. He exhaled a sigh of relief, stood and urgently gathered his things, starting with the restraints.
