Free Mixed Blood by Roger Smith Page B

passenger seat. Something about him must have set off alarm bells. Next thing the cop was asking Nolan to open the rear of the van.
    That’s when Nolan shot the cop.
    And the uniform in the prowl car shot Nolan, who fell down in the snow beside the dead cop. The big guy had a pistol in his hand, and he returned fire. He slid over to take the wheel of the van, and as he pulled away, half of his head disappeared and the van slowed, then stalled.
    The cop in the car shot at the van, and one of his bullets pierced the door and caught the young guy in the stomach. He pitched forward groaning, bleeding over the bags of money.
    Burn vaulted the seats. He shoved the dead guy out of the van, got in behind the wheel, and took off. The cop was still shooting. Burn floored the van, fishtailing, fighting to get it under control. As he drifted into a corner Burn saw the strobing lights of the cop car in pursuit. A block later it hit ice and spun one-eighty before collecting a lamppost and disappearing from Burn’s mirror.
    Burn ditched the van in a side street, grabbed one of the money bags from the rear, and took off into the night, leaving the van and the dying kid.
    He’d been given fake ID for the job, and he used it to rent a car and drive to Chicago. He called Susan and told her to get herself and Matt on the next plane to Miami and check into a hotel. He would meet her there. It still amazed him that she had listened, even when he refused to tell her what the hell was going on.
    In Chicago it was his turn to look up Tommy Ryan, who was connected. Fitting that what began with Tommy ended with him. It cost Burn plenty, but he managed to get nearly two million dollars laundered and the bulk of it transferred to a Swiss bank account. The new identities came next.
    He joined Susan in Miami. They both had news. He told her what he had really been doing. She told him that she was pregnant.
    She cried, raged at him. wanted to go home. She wanted their life back.
    Then she had stopped crying and agreed to go with him, and the three of them caught a plane to Cape Town.
    The kid in the van hadn’t died. He’d sung a long and loud plea bargain, and Jack Burn had joined the U.S. Marshals’ MOST WANTED list.

    The dogs found them first. A pack of strays roaming the Flats were drawn by the smell of the bodies. They ripped open the plastic garbage bags with their teeth and claws, then recoiled at the ripe stench of rotting human. They ran off to root in the trash cans of the nearby houses.
    Ronnie September and Cassiem Davids came upon them next, sometime after eight in the morning. They were both eleven years old, in their school uniforms, but they had no intention of going to school.
    They headed across the open veld, sucking on illicit cigarettes, putting as much distance between themselves and their homes in Paradise Park as they could. They were going to jump a taxi and head for Bellville to play arcade games.
    It was Ronnie who saw the white Nikes sticking out of the grass. He stopped and pointed. “Check that, man.”
    Cassiem stared. “Those is Nikes.”
    “I know that. You think I’m stupid?”
    The two boys edged closer to the body of a short, skinny man, only partly covered by black garbage bags. Boys their age who grow up on the Cape Flats are no strangers to dead bodies, but the stench was fierce.
    “Look, there’s another one.” Ronnie was pointing to where the body of a tall man spilled from the torn bags. He ran a discerning eye over the lanky corpse’s outfit. “His clothes is shit, man.”
    “God, but it stinks.” Cassiem was covering his nose with his hand.
    Ronnie sucked on his cigarette and stepped closer to the small corpse. The dead man lay on his back, the jagged slash in his throat gaping at the sky. “Yaaaw. He was cut, hey?”
    Cassiem was looking over Ronnie’s shoulder. “Those pants is nice. Diesel.”
    “It’s full of blood, man.” Ronnie stooped a little lower. “Maybe he got a