by James Tarr
“GODDAMMIT!” Dave heard himself scream. Then he got the shotgun unlocked, and everything slowed down.
There wasn’t a lot of room inside the cruiser, but he managed to get the stock up to his shoulder and aim it through the cracked windshield at the guy who was at the corner of the car, coming toward Kennedy. He could see Dave as well, and fired at him. The bullet went through the windshield and passed between Dave and Kennedy. Dave pulled the trigger on the shotgun, and nothing happened. He held the shotgun in his hands stupidly, frozen for half a second, then remembered that the chamber was empty.
“Motherfucker!” he yelled at himself and racked the pump as the robber with the pistol reached Kennedy’s window and stretched his hand out, the pistol pointed at the officer’s head.
Dave shoved the shotgun across Kennedy one-handed and pulled the trigger. The gun boomed and bucked upward, and when it came down the guy was nowhere to be seen. At the time Dave had no idea if he’d hit the bank robber, but on the video he’d just seen the man’s head literally explode from the load of buckshot fired at contact distance. He went straight down out of sight. The room of cops was silent.
Not knowing if he’d hit the robber or not Dave tugged at his door handle, and finally got out of the cruiser. He racked the empty shell out of the Remington and put it up to his shoulder. He started to move around to the other side of the car to check the gunman when another shot rang out and he jerked so badly he almost fell down. At the time he hadn’t known where the hell it had come from. On the video they’d all watched another guy in a red shirt climb out of the back seat of the Monte with a revolver and take a shot at Dave.
Dave spun and fired at red shirt as he climbed out of the Monte, but the guy kept coming. Red shirt was a big dude and he was yelling as he charged at Dave.
Dave worked the pump of the shotgun and fired again. At the time, he thought he’d missed the slowly running man, but in the video he saw the red shirt puff out as the pellets hit it. They might as well have been spitballs for all the effect they had, however, as he kept coming, firing again and again.
Working the pump again, Dave fired a third time, and at the time he’d thought for sure he’d hit Red Shirt, but the guy just stopped, stood there, screamed, “Fuck you!” and fired again.
The bullet hissed past his head. Dave worked the pump again, pulled the trigger, and click. Only four shells in the shotgun, he was out of ammo. The terror he felt at that moment shook him to his core even now, just watching the replay. With a primal scream Dave charged the big man, who got off two more shots before Dave reached him.
Holding the shotgun by the barrel in both hands like a club, Dave ducked under the pistol and slammed the shotgun across the guy’s big gut. As the man whoofed and bent over, Dave stepped past him and put all of his strength into a backhand while venting a huge scream. The sound of the walnut buttstock cracking across the back of the man’s head was plainly audible on the video. Someone in the audience said, “Holy shit.” The man went down on his face, and Dave fell to his knees, panting.
He stayed on hands and knees for three breaths, then pushed himself to his feet and hurried over to Kennedy’s side of the car to see what had happened to the first gunman. Dave barely had a chance to register the sight of the body on the pavement when more bullets began whizzing by him and thudding into the car.
“Shit!” He dropped down to his knees next to the bowed-in side of the cruiser as the popping sounds continued. Dave risked a glance over the hood of the cruiser and saw the driver was still trying to start the Monte, but there’d been another person in the back seat of the car. He was trying to climb out while shooting at Dave with a silver automatic.
“Bill! Bill! Fuck!” With a grunt, Dave shoved his upper body in through Kennedy’s door and grabbed at the cop’s holstered Glock. He remembered that it was in a security holster, and desperately tried to remember how to unlock one of those. With one hand holding the seat belt out of the way he wrapped his hand around the frame of the Glock, and his fingers found a tab. He pushed it in and felt a click. There was another tab under his thumb, and he pushed that. But the pistol wouldn’t come out of the holster. In the background could be heard sirens, getting closer and closer.
“Come on!” he screamed. Wait, there was something else he was supposed to do, push or twist or—the Glock 22 came free, and Dave fell backward out of the car. He landed on the body of the first gunman, then rolled and came up facing the Monte Carlo, Glock in a good two handed grip.
“Get this fucking thing started!” he heard from inside the Monte Carlo, and the man half out of the car and half in the front passenger seat turned and looked at Dave again. “S’up, bitch?” he yelled at Dave tauntingly, and fired again. “You want some a this?” He held the gun sideways and fired again, and Dave heard the round skip off the pavement next to him.
In Bravo-40s camera Dave was just visible in front of the cruiser, a fractured form on one knee. The Glock 22 has a 15-round magazine, and Dave emptied it as fast as he could pull the trigger. The last shooter jumped at the first shot, then slumped back into the open doorway of the car as a bullet visibly hit him in the chest. Dave fired and fired, bullets blowing out windows and punching holes in the sheet metal around the bank robber, but hitting him as well. The man fell backward, and dropped the pistol to the grass. On the video Dave saw the driver behind him slump forward, but when he’d been shooting he’d been too focused on the third shooter, he’d never realized he’d hit the driver as well.
Slide now locked back on the empty pistol, Dave dropped it onto the hood of their cruiser and jumped to Kennedy’s aid. There was blood all down the side of his face and neck. “Hang on! Hang on!” he heard himself saying, as Stone screeched up in Charlie-10. Terrified he was going to accidentally choke out Kennedy, Dave tentatively put pressure on the bullet wound on the left side of his neck. According to the time code on the videos, the entire incident from crash to Charlie-10 arriving had taken 59 seconds.
Dave climbed down off the table as White and Younks paused the video playback. He looked up to see every eye on the room on him. He was shaking uncontrollably.
“I’m sorry, I fucked up,” he told them. “I couldn’t get the shotgun out, I forgot about the lock. Forgot there wasn’t one chambered. I couldn’t hit that guy, couldn’t hit him with a shotgun, and missed half the shots with the Glock.” Dave looked down, and shook his head. He knew he might as well forget a career in law enforcement.
“Son, is that blood on your shirt?” the Chief asked him. “Didn’t someone give you another shirt to wear?”
Dave looked up. “No sir.”
The Chief looked around the room. “Anybody have a t-shirt he can borrow?”
“I do, sir,” Drake said, standing up. He headed toward the locker room, and as he passed Dave he nodded. Dave blinked, confused. Something wasn’t right, he wasn’t getting something that was going on.
“Mr. Anderson,” Sergeant White said to him. “I’ve been at the crash scene all day while the techs have been gathering evidence and taking photos. You didn’t miss a fucking thing with that shotgun, that asshole took three loads of double-ought buck and kept coming. Dead on his feet, probably, but he kept coming.”
“Until you scored the home run on his head,” someone said.
“And cracked the bat,” someone else added.
“You shoot Kennedy’s Glock better than he does,” someone else quipped, and the room erupted in laughter. Suddenly the group of cops surrounded him, all smiles and nods, loud laughter and quiet, appraising looks. Dave still didn’t get it. It felt like he was having an out-of-body experience.
“I don’t understand,” Dave said to them. “I fucked up, I got Kennedy shot.”
“Dude,” Officer Jim Stone said to him gently, “they shot Kennedy. And he’s going to be fine. You…” he took a deep breath, and touched Dave on the shoulder. “Jesus, kid, you went into a gunfight without a fucking gun and put four assholes in the ground. Empty gun a
nd no Kevlar, and you charged a dude twice your size who was shooting at you. I was on scene and saw his head, I thought someone hit him with a car.”
Dave blinked at that. “They’re all dead?” he asked stupidly. He’d wanted to watch the video in part because he didn’t remember some of what happened.
“What’s your name kid? David? Try fucking Goliath,” someone else said. “Holy shit.”
“Try Babe Ruth,” another officer said. “No, wait, fuck him, someone from Detroit—Ty Cobb.”
“But, I…” Dave said. His legs suddenly felt like they were going to go out on him, and his hands started shaking. He half fell, half sat in a chair.
The Sergeant pushed through the crowd of officers, which began to disperse. “You have someone you can call, your parents, a girlfriend?” Sergeant White asked him. “Maybe you shouldn’t drive home. You didn’t know they were dead?” He looked around at what officers still remained. “Everybody hit the road. Any updates on Kennedy or Team Jacob’s condition and I’ll have dispatch send them out.”
“I was…..too busy trying not to get killed. I thought maybe the one guy……”
The Chief of Police walked up. “Don’t talk about this case to anyone other than our investigators,” the Chief told him. “Especially the media. They are not your friends. And let me explain something to you—while you did a good thing, and our department is in your debt, you probably don’t want to get your face or your name out there any more than it has to be, talking to the press. Every one of those men you killed have families, friends. They may learn your name, but they don’t have to know your face.”
“Also, while I’m sure we’ll clear you, you can expect to get sued civilly by every one of their families. I doubt you’ve got any money, at your age, so they’ll sue the department. Deeper pockets.”
“What’s new?” said Sergeant White.
“Sued?” Dave said.
“Maybe even your parents, if they can. Not sure of the law on that. You’re going to need a lawyer.”
Officer Drake reappeared, holding a t-shirt in his hand. “Here kid. Sorry I got in your face.” He seemed embarrassed.
“Go home, get some rest. Come in tomorrow whenever you want, and give a statement to our detectives,” Lieutenant Younks told him. “You look exhausted. And….we’ve got a department grief counselor, if you need to talk to someone. I’d guess you’re still pretty jacked up, haven’t had time to process everything, but you killed four people. Bad guys doing bad things, but still. If you need to talk to someone she’s pretty good.”
“Thank you.” Dave sat there in the chair, t-shirt in hand, blinking.
“Stone, can you see that he gets home?”
Jim Stone nodded, then pulled his phone out of his pocket and hit redial and he walked toward the back of the room. “Dude, the brass rolled out the camera car video for the whole shift. Saw the whole thing. You’re not going to believe it….”
The two men in suits walked up from the rear of the room, and the lead man held out his hand to Dave. Dave took it automatically. “We could use a few guys like you,” he told Dave, and pulled out a business card. “You ever thought of joining the FBI?”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Marsh had more information about this target than was the usual. Normally, a white kid like him coming into a Detroit neighborhood like this meant drugs, but he knew that wasn’t the case this time.
Every target, every location presented its own set of problems. He’d done very minimal surveillance on the target’s residence, minimal for two reasons. The first was that the target was no stranger to surveillance techniques, and might notice the vehicle right away. The second was the location. The target’s residence was situated in a decent neighborhood, and unless Marsh rolled up in the middle of the night there was a chance a neighbor might see the car, or see him get out. Getting into the house quietly shouldn’t be a problem, and it didn’t look like he owned a dog or cat, but the kid owned guns and might know how to use them. There was always the house, but checking out all his options was how Marsh had stayed free and clear after eight years of doing freelance blackwork.
Traffic had been only moderate that morning, so he was able to keep the target’s Cherokee in sight with a very loose tail. The neighborhood the kid had parked in was deep in Detroit, so it was obvious he was working. He’d parked, and presumably he was in the car, somewhere in the back behind the tint. Marsh had only done one drive-by, then parked almost three blocks down and climbed into the rear of his own vehicle, which that day was a black Chevy TrailBlazer.
It was a long street that was made to seem narrow by the tall houses packed tightly together on either side. Most of the houses were clad in light colored wood or aluminum siding that had seen better days, and were so close together there was barely room enough to walk between them. The houses had porches high off the ground, five or six steps up, and sharp angles on their roofs. Those houses which had garages had them located in back, on an alley.
Back maybe in the fifties it had probably been a very busy, very nice neighborhood. Now it wasn’t busy, or nice. Marsh had been in place since just before seven a.m., and in close to two hours he had only seen one person leave for work, one car pulling out halfway between his SUV and the target’s vehicle. He was amazed. What the hell did all the people that lived on this street do for a living? Sure, some of them probably worked afternoon shift, or maybe midnights, but there were a good forty houses between his car and the target’s. A few of the houses were boarded up or obviously abandoned, but most of them seemed to be occupied. From the number of cars on the street there had to be people living to either side of them, but he saw no sign of them until just after nine, when movement to his right caught his eye.
A teenage boy, who looked maybe fourteen or fifteen, came out of a house and sat on the top step. He was in a Pistons jersey and baggy athletic shorts, and was wearing tennis shoes that looked expensive, although Marsh had no clue about that.
The boy glanced at Marsh’s vehicle, then nonchalantly glanced up the street first one way and then the other. There were a number of cars nearby, but Marsh had to admit the TrailBlazer he’d stolen for the day was nicer than most of the cars on the street. It was either that, or the kid knew the cars belonging to everybody who lived on the street, and was curious about the Chevy.
The kid kept sitting on the porch, not really looking at anything, and after a few minutes looked over his shoulder into the house and shook his head. Marsh was parked in front of the house next door, and couldn’t see who the kid had looked at.
Marsh glanced quickly down the street, and used his binos to eye the target’s vehicle. It was on the opposite side of the street, maybe two hundred yards down. Marsh couldn’t see him in there, but he knew he was there. He had to be. Where the hell else was he going to go in this neighborhood? There’d been a pack of wild dogs trotting down the sidewalk twenty minutes ago, for fuck’s sake. Like a goddamn Third World country.
Okay, not quite Third World. Marsh had spent a lot of time in the Third World, it was where he’d learned his trade. Detroit was not nearly as bad as the Third World. No death squads, shanty towns, cholera, sharia law. However, you always hear stories, and he’d heard stories about how bad Detroit was. He didn’t believe them, because stories were stories, they weren’t reality. But when he’d arrived in the area he’d spent two days just driving around Detroit and the surrounding suburbs, learning the streets, the cities, and damned if the stories about Detroit weren’t true.
There were bad, truly shitty areas in every big city. Some parts of Chicago and New York were like Baghdad. But even for all their bad neighborhoods, Chicago and New York were busy, populated, alive. People lived there, people who lived, lost, loved, and died. Driving around Detroit, he was shocked to see whole neighborhoods of the city gone. Vacant land. Huge parts of the city were just dead. And the rest of it, like this street, weren’t doing much better. The people that lived on this street just didn’t seem to be d
oing much living.
Movement caught his eye. Something had fallen—or been tossed—out the open second story window of the house where the kid was sitting. Had that window been open before? He couldn’t remember. He also couldn’t see whatever had been tossed out, it was lying in grass that was a week past needing to be cut.
Marsh stayed motionless in the car, and knew he was invisible behind the tint as long as he didn’t move. The kid stayed on the step, just sitting there like he didn’t have a care in the world. After a few minutes he looked up and down the street again, then lazily stood up and sauntered down the steps to the lawn.
He angled right for whatever had fallen or been tossed to the lawn, and bent down quickly to pick it up. He then walked straight for Marsh’s vehicle.
Marsh hissed quietly, and drew his pistol as the kid got to within a few feet of the car. It was something new he’d picked up for this job, a Springfield Armory XDM. He liked it because it had the same grip angle as a Colt 1911, something he was very familiar with, and a decent trigger. Plus, the magazines were crazy—they held 19 rounds of 9mm. The only thing he didn’t like about it was the two-tone finish. The stainless steel slide was a little fancy for him, but you worked with what tools you had. The teen stood next to the rear passenger door, inches from Marsh. His hands came up, and Marsh saw that what he had, the object that had been tossed out of the window, was a long flathead screwdriver.
The teen raised the screwdriver, and just as he was about to wedge it between the window and the door frame Marsh lifted his Springfield and knocked three times against the glass, right in front of the teen’s face. The boy was close enough to see the gun through the tinted glass. His eyes went huge and he jumped back, dropping the screwdriver.