Cunningham was soaked in sweat, but he’d freed his left hand. He reached across his chest, rotating his trunk as far as he could, and unbuckled the cuff on his right wrist. No way to get to his ankles in the box.

He unclipped the leather wrist cuffs from the sides of the box. Heavy bastards, big buckles. He looped one cuff through the other, and buckled them tight. He held the cuffs in one hand, snapped his wrist a little. All together, maybe two feet long, good heft, decent leverage. He fiddled with them a bit so that the heavy buckles were right where he wanted them.

Motherfuckers would have to open the damn box eventually.

Weaver held on to the door grip as the van spun out of the spot behind Manning’s condo and south down the alley toward the church. Never set up a mission without a back door. Weaver had four rental cars in the basement garage of a building three blocks east.

The three guys in the van were all long-time InterGov pros. They knew the drill. At this point, it was get away or get dead.

Just as the van neared the end of the alley, a PD truck pulled into the alley from the south, blocking their exit.

The InterGov driver swung the van hard left into the parking lot on the north side of the church, barreled through the church lot out on to Sheridan on a diagonal, clipping the front end of a car as it made the turn east.

A Chicago squad car shot out an alley on their left, trying to cut them off. Weaver’s driver swerved to give Weaver an angle. Weaver already had the M4 out the window. No aiming for legs now. He put most of a clip through the windshield of the squad as the van shot past it, two wheels up on the curb, pedestrians diving out of the way. The cop car swerved, slowed, bounced up the curb and crunched into the brick three-flat across the street.

Weaver couldn’t believe it, but they just might get clear. One more block. He could hear sirens, but nothing in sight. He hit the button on the door opener and the van shot down the drive into the garage, pulling up next to the rentals. Weaver put the door down behind them.

Weaver turned to the guys in the back. “Do me a favor. Open the box and shoot the cop. We won’t be needing him.”

Cunningham heard the first latch on the box flip up. Box would open from his left. He tightened his right fist around the linked cuffs and tensed his torso. As the lid swung up, Cunningham jackknifed up with it, his right arm already swinging the linked cuffs even as he spotted the target. One of the guys who had dressed him.

The cuffs caught the guy right across the eyes, the heavy buckle ripping into one of them, blood spurting. The man’s head snapped back against the side window of the van, and his hands flew to his eyes, the automatic he had been holding clattering to the floor of the van next to the body box.

Cunningham was already twisted toward the gun. He reached down, snapped it up off the floor, and swung it back around just as the man on the other side of the box tried to push the lid back down on him. Cunningham squeezed off a round, not aiming, just looking for an edge, the noise in the van deafening. The man behind the box ducked down, losing his leverage on the lid. Cunningham reached up over the lid and shot down at the man twice – hitting him first in the shoulder, then in the head – and the man flopped dead to the floor.

Cunningham felt the man he had whipped with the cuffs grabbing him now, an arm locking around his neck. He could see the older guy in the passenger seat trying to get a M4 turned around on him, but the muzzle caught in the shoulder belt. Cunningham shot him through the back of the neck and kept the pistol tracking left toward the driver, who had his pistol out and was swinging it toward Cunningham. They fired simultaneously, Cunningham’s round hitting the driver high in the center chest, knocking him back, just as Cunningham felt his right hand jerked away, the pistol knocked loose by the force of a round hitting the edge of the barrel. The pistol bounced off the lid of the box to the floor to Cunningham’s right. He tried to bend, to reach for it, but the man behind him held him back.

The man he had whipped with the cuffs tightened his right forearm against Cunningham’s throat, had his left hand locked on his right wrist for leverage. With his feet still strapped in the box, Cunningham couldn’t use his legs to move. He jerked his head to the side, trying for a head butt, just catching the edge of the man’s chin. Gave him a feel for where the guy’s face was at least. Cunningham grabbed the man’s forearm with his left hand, levered around it, swinging with his right. The blow caught the man on the side of the head, but there wasn’t enough to it. Cunningham couldn’t get his legs into anything, the arm across his throat closing tighter, tighter, Cunningham beginning to feel the panic as his body ran out of oxygen. He reached back again, fingers extended, felt the other man’s face slick with blood streaming from the ruined left eye. Cunningham’s fingers found the right eye. Cunningham dug in, his middle finger digging in, finding the corner of the eye socket, pushing, pushing, and suddenly something giving, the man screaming now, but still holding on, still the crushing pressure on Cunningham's throat. Cunningham dug harder into the eye socket, felt the finger sliding in, curled it toward him and pulled, some resistance, then it giving, something ripping loose.

The man broke his grip and slumped back against the window, both hands pressed to his face, something between a sob and a scream coming through his hands. Cunningham shook the ruined eyeball from his fist, grabbed the hair on either side of the man’s head and rammed the head against the side window three times. Four. Five. The man went quiet, his hands falling away from his face, one ruined eye and one empty, bloody socket staring at Cunningham. Then the man slumped sideways to the floor, unconscious.

Cunningham sat up and undid the buckles holding his ankles. He rolled over the side of the box onto the blinded man, rolled him onto his stomach, jerked his arms behind him. Cunningham grabbed the leather cuffs off the floor of the van, buckled them around the man’s wrists. He made a quick check on the other three, but they were all dead.

Cunningham was just stepping from the van when the door to the garage went up and two squad cars sped down the ramp. They fanned out right and left of the van, braking, two cops in each unit, all four men jumping out, crouching down behind the squad car doors, guns extended.

“Freeze and show us your hands,” one shouted.

Cunningham wasn’t sure what had gone on, but based on the wild-ass ride over and then faint sound of gunfire he’d been able to hear while he was still inside the box, he figured it was a hairball. No point doing anything right now other than assuming the position. He held out his hands, turned to the van, and leaned against the side.

“Got four in the van,” he said. “Three dead, one cuffed. My name’s Cunningham. I’m a cop.”

“We’ll see,” said one of the cops, walking up behind him. “Just give me one hand, nice and easy.”

Cunningham let the cop take his wrist, but he was getting a little tired of being cuffed.

Lynch rolled past the car and then started running north up the sidewalk toward the pickup, crouching to keep behind the line of cars. When he could see the side of the truck two cars up, he slowed, his gun extended.

An arm reached out from under the truck, holding a rifle by the top of the barrel. It dropped the rifle in the gutter next to the curb.

“Chicago police!” Lynch shouted. “Slide out from under the truck. Slowly. Head and arms first.” Lynch looked across the street. No more firing from the Manning condo. No more firing from Ferguson’s position. No more firing that Lynch could hear anywhere.

Lynch saw a man’s head and arms extend from under the truck, the man easily sliding out, rising to his feet. He was Lynch’s age, shorter, maybe five-eight, compact, his face placid.