by James Tarr
Moving his throbbing head, he looked over his shoulder to see the door was still open. He could hear the two guys in the main room, talking quietly and moving around. They’d left him alone, and alive, but he didn’t know for how long. Dave might come back at any minute, and then it would be over for both of them.
Shit. His heart fell. Dave had been right all along. He gritted his teeth. Don’t think about that. Focus. Focus. You get out of this and there’s still a way to bring the media in on it. There had to be.
The one thing he had going for him was that he was skinny. He hadn’t been this skinny since junior high. Trying not to make any noise, Mickey pushed his arms down and hunched his torso as he lay on the dusty floor. You don’t realize how dusty hardwood floors get until your face is pressed into one.
With a lot of pain but only a little noise, he was able to get his cuffed wrists under his ass, and then he began the arduous—because he never stretched and wasn’t nearly as flexible as he should have been—process of pulling his legs out from between his arms. Doing it without making any noise was the hardest part. Lying half on a hard wood floor and half on his own elbow, his re-abused ribs were complaining loudly. Finally, his hands were clear of his feet, and he pulled them up his body and studied the zip cuffs.
White plastic, about half an inch wide, they were cinched tight enough to hurt. He’d heard from other lab employees talking shop that sharp blows at the right angle would break the plastic ratchet/lock inside zip-cuffs. Plastic hard enough to resist the chewing teeth of protestors tended to be brittle, and zip-cuffs were vulnerable to brute force attacks on their weakest point. However, smashing his wrists hard against his bony hips one or three times to break the cuff ratchet would be sure to bring one of the bad guys into the bedroom, and he had no doubt that, at that point, they’d just kill him.
If only he had a lighter or some other heat source, then he’d be able to burn through them pretty quickly. No lighter, nothing in the pockets of his sweatpants. A quick check showed him that he’d even lost one of his boots—the big guy had knocked him right out of it. Shit, the one boot he was wearing wasn’t even laced up, he’d just slipped it on, and—
Son of a bitch! Mickey reached down and, as quickly as he could, began unthreading the lace from the boot his still had on. It was a round, black nylon lace, military style.
Getting it all the way out of the eyelets in the boot seemed to take forever, and the sound of the black lace flopping around seemed huge to him in the small room. Thank God the entire floor of the cabin was creaky, the guys out in the main room sounded like thundering elephants just shifting their weight. He wished they’d talk some more, cover the sound of what he was doing.
After what felt like an hour he finally had the lace all the way out of the boot. He tied one end of it to the top eyelet in the boot, and with great difficulty (because his hands couldn’t bend inward enough) made a loop around one of the plastic ties around his wrist.
Mickey looked around, looking for something to tie the other end to, but there wasn’t anything. Shit. Gritting his teeth, he reached up and grabbed the edge of the duct tape around his face. Pulling it down hurt like hell, it felt like he was ripping his skin off, especially the skin of his lips.
Finally his mouth was more or less exposed, and he fed the end of the shoelace into his mouth and bit down on it. Hoping this would work, he then slowly began running his hands up and down the length of shoelace, from his face to his boot. It didn’t make much noise, but then again it wasn’t doing anything either.
In the dim light he squinted, and realized there was too much slack in the shoelace. He pushed his foot down, felt the tension in his teeth, and began sliding his hands back and forth again.
The faster he went, the more noise it would make, but he had to move at a speed fast enough for it to work. This was no different than making a wood and string bow for starting fires. Wrapped once around the plastic cuff, as he moved his hands up and down the tight shoelace would generate heat. If he did it right, the friction might even—should—generate enough heat to melt through the cuff.
The shoelace made a buzzing hum as he worked his hands up and down. Was he wasting his time? Would this even work? He’d managed to work his sweatpants down off his ass and around his knees as he lay on his side and wiggled like an earthworm.
The theory was sound, but maybe the shoelace would break from the heat, or deteriorate under the strain. Could he even move fast enough to generate heat? Yes—there it was! He was starting to feel some heat on his wrist, starting to—ow, that hurt, it was burning his skin, don’t stop, keep going, the pain was causing his eyes to tear up—and suddenly the shoelace burned through the plastic cuff with a small popping sound. He pulled his hands apart.
Yeah! Science, bitch! he exulted. Now he just had to do the same thing with the cuff around his ankles. Then what? Maybe try to jump out the back window? He’d seen them take Dave’s Kahr.
If only there was—he stopped thinking, and instead just looked underneath the tall, old bed. There, leaning against the wall, in the dark corner, was Dave’s shotgun. He could see the buttstock sitting on the floor. Holy shit, they hadn’t seen it?
Mickey looked down his body. Even if he could walk, going around the end of the bed he would cross right in front of the open doorway. Without a second thought he began crawling under the bed toward the black stock of the shotgun. Getting the gun was more important than undoing the cuff around his ankles.
Both Kyle and Marcus heard the sound from the back bedroom. They looked toward the open doorway, then at each other. “I’ll check it out,” Marcus said. He was closest, anyway, and Kyle could cover the front door from where he was, staring out the big front window. It was only about four steps from the front of the cabin to the bedroom door. Rifle at low ready, Marcus looked in to the left, where he’d thrown the unconscious FBI agent, and saw….just his feet. Sticking out from underneath the bed, sweatpants bunched up around his shins, ankles still cuffed. What the hell? He stomped around the foot of the bed, rifle up. What the hell was this guy doing?
Mickey crawled underneath the high narrow bed, the floor creaking under him, expecting any second to hear shouts, to feel his feet being seized and pulled back. Still under the bed, he reached a hand out as he continued to hunch forward, and his fingertips brushed the shotgun. As his head cleared the bedframe the shotgun twisted where it leaned against the wall, and fell. On his head. With a clank.
Mother—! With a growl, Mickey pulled himself forward on his elbows as he heard footsteps approaching. He grabbed the shotgun and rolled onto his back, his head in the narrow gap between the bed and the wall. What was it Dave had told him? That it was ready to go, fully loaded, nine rounds of buckshot, he just had to turn off the safety. Which was….where?
One of the men appeared at the end of the bed, looking down at him over his rifle, just as Mickey remembered where the shotgun’s safety was located.
Dave was sweating again. The sun wasn’t on him, not yet, but he knew the time was fast approaching for him to do something. The two men had been in the house for maybe ten minutes, and for all he knew they were torturing Mickey—or the young FBI Lab employee was already dead. Well, they probably weren’t torturing him, Dave was sure he’d be able to hear that, the walls of the house were pretty darn thin.
He didn’t want to move, didn’t want to get up, but he knew he’d have to, sooner or later. Either that, or he’d get shot where he lay. He had a gun; even though it was only a pistol, it was better than nothing, and he damn sure didn’t want to die for lack of shooting back. It was just…..he knew this was it. However it started, he figured it would end up with him dead.
Just like at a match, he pictured what he’d do in his head. Getting up from his prone position on the slope would be a bit awkward. So would drawing his Glock from beneath the windbreaker, especially if he was trying to sit up or stand at the same time. So how best to do it?
After working through several
solutions in his head, he guessed that sitting up sharply while shoving his hands down to either side of him, when combined with the slope, would get him to his feet the quickest. Alpha was the biggest threat to him, he was closest, so Dave envisioned himself turning, sweeping the jacket away, drawing, and then advancing up the slope. Have to make sure not to look up too high, or he’d be staring at the rising sun and be blinded. One or two steps and he’d be at the top of the slope, and then….whatever happened, happened. Front sight, press. Repeat as necessary.
Just thinking about it had his heart hammering in his chest. If this was a match, he’d try to calm his nerves, take a couple of breaths, stand in the shooting box, and wait for the Start signal. Except he was afraid to take more than shallow breaths in case Alpha heard him, and these targets would be shooting back. Shit.
Dave jerked as the unmistakable BOOM! of a shotgun came from inside the house, rattling the windows in their thin frames, with an answering volley of rifle fire.
The man fired, the muzzle of his rifle flashing in the dim bedroom, just as Mickey shoved the long shotgun toward him and pulled the trigger. The buttstock was nowhere near his shoulder as the gun BOOMED. Mickey felt pain; pain in his chest where he was pretty sure he’d been shot, and pain in his face where the shotgun’s buttstock had come back and punched him.
The man with the rifle stepped back, but Mickey couldn’t tell if he’d hit him. Maybe he’d just been surprised. Mickey pulled the stock against his shoulder as he pulled the trigger again, and again. The shotgun wasn’t just loud, it felt like he was setting bombs off inside the room. He knew he’d hit the man, because as he fell down Mickey saw his face had changed shape, and color.
Struggling to sit up behind the bed, Mickey flinched as the man in the front room began firing blindly through the wall at him. The bedroom filled with flying bits of wood and bullets, the hot pieces of metal zipping easily through the entire house to hit the ridge out back. Yelling incoherently, Mickey fired the shotgun through the open doorway, then brought it across the bed and fired it twice through the thin wall between him and the rest of the cabin. Then he dove back down to the floor as the wall before him began disintegrating under concentrated rifle fire.
The sound of the shotgun inside the house seemed to stop Dave’s heart, and his mind went blank. Then he moved.
Up and forward off the slope, hands pushing him to his feet. Spin left, right hand going down and sweeping the windbreaker back, away from the holstered Glock, even as he looked up the slope.
Hand on gun, gun coming out, left hand moving to gun, eyes moving up to see—shit, he was higher up the slope than he thought, he was right fucking THERE, staring over the top of the ridge, right into the face of a prone guy, Alpha, with a rifle who was so surprised it should have been funny. He was so close Dave could have spit on him. Dave pushed his Glock out in a two-handed grip, red fiber optic insert in the front sight glowing nuclear red from the sun hitting it straight on, and fired three times into the man’s face from a distance of maybe six feet. He pulled the last shot, rushing it, as he pivoted left. Shit, there wasn’t one guy lying there, there were two, and the second guy was rolling onto his right shoulder, bringing his rifle up to bear. He fired at Dave, the sound massive at that distance.
Dave fired at him as he charged up the hill, kept firing, moving targets were harder to hit, then he tripped and fell and rolled down the opposite slope, landing against a body with a thump. His thigh was burning, and Dave knew that he’d been hit, but the pain seemed distant. Gun up, a quick check of the two men told him they were dead. Both men had taken multiple rounds in the face. They’d been so close, holy shit. They’d been right on top of him, all night. Alpha had powder burns on his face.
Somehow alive between two dead men, Dave lay his head back down on the dirt and gasped for air.
Smith nearly jumped at the sound of shotgun and rifle fire almost directly in front of him. Almost instantly the back wall of the cabin began splintering as someone with a rifle began pounding it from inside, the rounds impacting the slope to his right.
Almost at that same moment he caught a glimpse of movement off to his left, and heard a quick volley of shots. He spun his head to see someone disappearing over the ridge, right about where Alpha was positioned. What the fuck? Who was that, where had he come from? It was like he’d appeared out of nowhere, blinked into existence.
“Contact, contact, I see one on foot at Alpha’s position,” he said into his mike. “Alpha, what’s your status, over?” He turned his head and saw Bailey was looking at him with a ‘What the fuck?’ expression on his face. Smith jabbed a hand at and past Bailey, telling him simply, “Alpha.”
Bailey nodded, and took off around the outside of the ridge, heading toward Alpha’s position.
Kyle fired left, right, high, low, peppering the wall and cabinets and kitchen appliances between his position and the back bedroom. He wasn’t sure where the FBI agent was inside the room, how he’d gotten loose, or how the fuck he’d snagged a shotgun, but he could sure as hell ruin his whole day.
He paused his trigger finger, ears ringing. “Charlie One is down,” he said into his mike. He fired the last few rounds from his magazine through the wall, then did a quick reload. He could see Marcus’ body through the open doorway. What the fuck had happened in there? “Subject is in the back bedroom. I’ve got him pinned down, don’t know if he’s still alive.” After those first few shotgun blasts, one of which had definitely come through the wall in his direction, he hadn’t heard anything.
“Hold in place,” Smith told him over the radio.
“Roger that,” Kyle said. The fresh magazine in his rifle was his last, but he had the Glock 19 and two fifteen-round magazines. More than enough to complete the mission. He glanced over his shoulder out the front window, making sure there were no surprises heading in his direction,, then moved closer to the kitchen, tucking himself in the corner. It was a better spot, one where he could cover the doorway without immediately being a target, and not likely to be hit if the FBI agent started shooting through the wall again.
Rifle up, covering the doorway, Kyle waited. And realized that he could smell smoke.
Dave sat up between the two dead men, holstering his pistol, and glanced at his leg. Blood soaking his pantleg over his thigh, but he didn’t see any chunks missing. He didn’t even see an entry wound, .223s were so tiny. Pain just a dull throb.
He quickly glanced left and right, then took hold of one of the dead men’s ARs. That was a shotgun versus rifle fight he was hearing in the house, no way he’d join that gunfight with only a pistol. At least that meant Mickey was still alive—hopefully. He tugged on the rifle and nearly fell on top of the man when the rifle tugged back. What the hell? Then he saw that it was wrapped around the man’s body on a sling. Were these guys wearing body armor? Dave was trying to figure out how to free the rifle from the dead man when the bullet came so close to his head he felt something—air, heat, the soundwave of the supersonic projectile—as it whipped past his ear.
Dave dove sideways to the ground even before he consciously realized what had happened, before his brain catalogued the sound he’d heard as “gunshot”. Now continuous rifle fire, bullets flying all around him. Dave twisted onto his back, trying to get as flat as possible. He yanked massively at the rifle again even as he looked around to find out where the shooting was coming from.
The man’s body flopped from his efforts, but the rifle remained attached, and past the dead man’s head, around the outside corner of the ridge, Dave saw a man advancing toward him, shooting as he came. The bullets were hitting all around Dave, throwing up dirt and sand, and he could feel them thudding into the dead body next to him. Jesus, where did he come from? How many of these guys were there? The man was visible from the waist up, maybe twenty-five yards away, pinning down Dave as he advanced with suppressive fire, until he could get a better angle on him.
With an angry growl, Dave drew his Glock and rolled onto his
left side, pushing his pistol out in a two-handed hold above the head of the dead body next to him. A bullet hit right in front of him, showering him with dirt, as he settled his sights on the man starting to run toward him. Dave fired, kept firing as the man fired, pulled the trigger until the slide locked back on the Glock.
The man was down, Dave could see the top half of his body in the dirt, not moving. Dave had panicked, barely seeing the sights, just shooting in the general direction of the threat. He couldn’t even remember where he’d been aiming, had no idea how many times he might have actually hit the guy.
Taking a couple of ragged breaths, Dave waited to see if any new pain hit him, if he’d been hit again. His right arm felt weird, and he looked down. He couldn’t see anything on the windbreaker—no, shit, there was a hole in the sleeve. He rolled over on his back between the first two men he’d killed and tentatively touched his upper arm—and bit back a scream. Fuck, yes, he’d been hit. He could still move his arm, even flex his muscle a little bit, so the bone hadn’t been hit, but it hurt so bad…. Gritting his teeth, he pulled a fresh magazine from his belt and reloaded his Glock. Right hand was still working, but dexterity had taken a hit. At least he wasn’t shaking. Yet.
He didn’t want to get up, but he couldn’t stay there. With a deep breath, he lunged forward, to his feet, and then slowly advanced toward the man he’d just downed, gun up and now shaking just a little bit. His leg was starting to burn and he couldn’t walk normally, but he could shuffle step around the outside of the ridge. It didn’t help his stride any that he was on a slope partially made of sand.