Nguyen stays quiet. He doesn’t look like much, and now the two guys sitting across the table are wondering if he’s ready to take down an armored truck.
One of them says to Podesa, “This ain’t rocket science but we’re on a tight clock. There’s the driver plus three guards in the back. You pull out in front and cut them off. We’re right behind you in the tail car. Two minutes and we’re gone before they know what happened.”
Then he glances over at Nguyen. “Charlie Chan here wigs out and our whole plan goes to shit.”
The other one chuckles to himself like Muttley.
Podesa sticks his hands up all defensive. “Hey, you’re the one who called me last minute saying we need the extra muscle. Don’t worry about Shaun. We’re good. The two of us can manage crowd control.”
It’s 3:29 a.m. and they’re at the NoHo Diner on West Magnolia. It’s close to empty—only a couple of people by the counter, plus the four of them at a table next to the wall of black-and-white movie-star photos.
The one in charge waves for the check. He looks Nguyen straight in the eye and says, “You better hope so. This ain’t folding fuckin’ laundry.”
***
Now they’re parked on Figueroa below the Hollywood Freeway overpass.
Two cars. Podesa rolling solo, Nguyen half a block north in the back seat of a grey Honda Civic that smells of old menthol smoke and grease. The other two are sitting up front.
When they peeled out of the diner car lot earlier, the one in charge introduced himself as Rick then nodded at his partner riding shotgun and deadpanned it. “This is Morty.”
Switchblade grins from both of them now.
The radio’s playing softly—Billie Eilish singing about how she’s the bad guy.
Rick runs through the game plan one more time, his voice muffled by the foam earplugs they’re wearing. “Once we load the shaped charge, the door’s gonna come off quick. What you need to do is watch the guards when we pull them out. Keep ’em on the ground. Make sure you take the guns and any comms they got. Pass me those bags there.”
Nguyen hands him two large nylon carryalls from the back seat.
“I was just fuckin’ with you before. Stay cool, okay? Don’t screw up, and you’ll make some money. You do good on this, there could be more work down the line.”
Morty checks his watch. “We’re up. They should be coming off Sunset now.”
Rick turns the music down and gets on the walkie-talkie to Podesa. “You ready?”
He slides a magazine into the AR15 sitting on his lap. Morty does the same, handing it to Nguyen then loading up another for himself. Thirty seconds later, an armored truck comes cruising past the Civic and they ease out behind it. The rest of the street is deserted. Podesa backs out across the empty lanes where Dewap bends around onto Figueroa and boxes it in.
The masks go on and the three of them are out of the car. Rick is up on the rear doors attaching the shaped charge to them, Morty ducking to the side as it detonates.
Nguyen holds back as the explosion rattles the truck with way too much force. But it stays upright and they’ve blasted through the lock, so once the smoke clears Rick yanks the door open. He storms inside with Morty right behind him.
They shove the guards out and Nguyen lines them up by the side of the truck, taking their guns and scooping them into a pillowcase.
Podesa comes around from the front with the driver. Nguyen gets all four of them face down on the concrete, fingers laced behind their heads. Podesa moves into position at the back of the truck and scans the area. He looks at his stopwatch. “Forty seconds.”
The job’s running smooth. The target is neutralized and they’re moving on schedule. Rick tosses one of the black bags out the rear door and it lands at Morty’s feet.
It all goes sideways when he comes out with the second bag.
Rick grabs the pillowcase with the weapons, pulls one out and checks it’s loaded. Then he turns and shoots Podesa. The bullet sends him stumbling backwards. He falls over, eyes wide, and makes a sharp wheezing sound.
Nguyen moves to react but Morty hits him with the stock of his gun. It puts him on the ground. He picks up Nguyen’s AR15 and fires it into the side of the truck.
There’s a lot of noise but no bullets. Blanks.
Morty smiles and slings the nylon bag over his shoulder.
Rick comes over to Nguyen splayed out on the concrete, aiming the guard’s weapon at his head. “Your friend, he was already a dead man walking. You’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time, hermano. It’s nothing personal.”
Nguyen has a detonator up his sleeve.
He slides it down and hits the switch with his thumb. “You got that right.”
The carryall on Morty’s shoulder explodes and takes his arm clean out the socket. One side of his face is sliced open with the blast and it looks like the inside of a pomegranate. He stands there for a moment surrounded by a confetti shower of greenbacks then drops.
Nguyen rolls across the ground in one fluid movement. He grabs Morty’s weapon and gets up in a shooter’s pose before Rick has even thought to react. He’s standing there covered in blood and small pieces of his partner when Nguyen shoots him in the torso.
Pop pop. Double tap, center mass.
He looms over Rick’s body then finishes it with a shot to the head.
A brief spasm of life then nothing.
Nguyen looks over at Podesa to confirm he’s dead, then picks up the black bag.
He shoots Morty twice as he walks back to the Civic. The engine is running.
Nguyen fishtails south on Figueroa then up the off-ramp, turning right onto Temple.
The guards are still face down on the street—what the hell just happened?
