by D L Barbur
It was amazing how at times like this, things could settle into a boring monotony. I’d crawl forward a dozen feet, and pause to listen and rest, then crawl some more. We were absolutely vulnerable here in the ditch. All someone would need to do would be to walk up to the ditch and empty a magazine into us. Game over. Dale was keeping an eye on us through the scope of his rifle, assuming he hadn’t passed out from pain or medications.
The night was cool, but I was sweating as we crawled. Every time I would stop for a while, I would start to get chilled. The dry air had me feeling parched, and I wished I’d brought some water, but I’d left everything behind that wasn’t an instrument of mayhem.
I kept wondering how Casey and Alex were doing. I hadn’t heard any screaming, or bursts of gunfire, so that was good I guessed. I wanted to call them on the radio, but our plan was to maintain strict radio silence. The FBI technical people had a whole array of frequency scanners and spectrum analyzers deployed, and the more we transmitted, the more likely they were to detect us. They couldn’t decrypt our transmissions in real time, but we still needed to be careful.
After crawling one last leg, I checked the GPS. We were there. I rolled onto my side and looked back at Robert. He gave me a thumbs up. He was ready. I tried to stretch out my kinked muscles as well as I could before pressing the transmit button on my radio.
“Jumpshot,” I whispered.
Henry didn’t have to answer on the radio. The explosion spoke for itself. The rest of Rudder’s dynamite went off with a deep boom that I felt through the ground under me. The sky lit up for a few seconds as the fuel cans they’d placed next to the dynamite went off in a big Hollywood ball of fire, then subsided to a faint orange glow. That was our cue.
I pulled myself up out of the ditch, expecting to catch a round in the face at any second. We ran over to the side of the house. The sky was still lit up by the burning gas. Rudder and Henry had detonated their second bomb a few miles from the first, so hopefully they would be able to evade the state troopers that were no doubt looking for them.
The cold part of my mind realized that even if they did get caught, it wouldn’t matter. They had already played their most important part in this little drama.
Robert and I hugged the wall against the side of the house. So far no one seemed to have noticed us.
The ground sloped from the front to the back of the house, so the basement actually had ground level access in the rear. Before we’d let him go, we’d picked Stuckey’s brain about the layout of the house. He hadn’t spent much time there and had no clue about the layout of the upper floors. But he’d told us the basement had been converted to office space for the ranch manager and was used for storage.
Richard and I stopped by a plain white door. In my night vision goggles, I could see that the door handle was on the left, and I couldn’t see the hinges, so I knew it opened inward. I turned so Richard could reach in my backpack and pull out the dart gun, then he turned and I pulled a tool called a FuBar out of Robert’s pack. It was a demolition tool that had become a favorite of firefighters. It wasn’t as good as a fullsize sledgehammer and crowbar, but it was much more portable.
I jammed the claw end of the tool into the door frame right by the doorknob. The dying rabbit noises broadcast by the loudspeaker mostly drowned out the noise. I pushed on the long end of the bar, and with a crack, the door opened a few inches and stopped.
Fuck. It was barricaded. We’d been afraid of that. It was inevitable that sooner or later this was going to turn into a loud, furious, and probably suicidal gunfight, but we’d hoped to at least get inside the house first.
Somebody on the other side of the door said: “What the fuck?” I put my shoulder against the door and it gave a few inches, then a few inches more. I heard something sliding across the floor. Through the gap, I could see a couch was on the other side.
Robert was one of those not-too-tall guys that were almost as wide as he was tall, with thick muscles and a bull neck. He put his shoulder against the door too. We heard a thump that sounded much like a body hitting the floor, and the door got much easier to push. We got it halfway open and Robert squatted down, grabbed the bottom edge of the couch and flipped it over.
I heard a grunt from the other side, and we both piled in the door. There was a guy half under the couch, trying to crawl out. Robert aimed the dart gun at the base of his neck and pulled the trigger from a few inches away. He thrashed around for a few seconds, then stopped.
Robert started zip tying his hands together, while I stepped over the couch. There was no one else in the room. It was full of desks and filing cabinets.
“Earl?” I heard a man’s voice come from a doorway off to the left.
Robert abandoned trying to restrain the sleeping man, and turned his attention to the dart gun. It was slow to reload. First, you had to put a dart in the chamber without pricking yourself, then you had to pump it up like an old-fashioned pellet rifle.
“Earl?” The man said again. I heard the sound of a toilet lid falling.
“Earl, answer me.” Next came the distinctive sound of a rifle round being chambered.
My own rifle had a suppressor screwed to the end of the barrel. If this had been a movie, I could have shot somebody in one room, and it would be quiet enough that the people in the next room wouldn’t know. Real life didn’t work that way. Firing a .308 rifle, even with a suppressor would be painfully loud, and everyone in the house would hear it.
I crossed the room in a couple bounds, slinging the rifle across my back as I went. I pulled Dale’s leaf-shaped Gerber knife out of it’s sheath and stood with my back to the wall next to the door.
The door swung open and the guy stepped out. In the goggles, I could tell he was in his fifties, not very tall, balding and a little chubby. He had a rifle in his hands. I had just enough time to register that he must have had some training because his finger was straight along the receiver of the rifle.
He had just enough time to say “what…” then I wrapped my left arm around his face, covering his mouth with the crook of my elbow, then jammed the knife in my right into his throat.
I held on to him as he thrashed, and slammed the knife in again. I knew instantly that I would never be able to change my own oil again. The hot, viscous blood on my hand and arm felt just like oil draining out of the pan from a warm engine. I heard a wet gurgling sound, a little like water going down a drain, as his lungs pulled air in through the giant gash in his throat.
He fought me and almost managed to get loose. He dropped the rifle and tore at my arm with a strength I wouldn’t have predicted. He bit at my arm, and headbutted the night vision goggles askew. I jammed the knife into his chest, and fell backward, bringing him down with me. I landed painfully on the rifle and wrapped my legs around him as he whipsawed around trying to break through. I quit stabbing and just held on with my right arm.
Finally, he stopped thrashing. His heels drummed on the floor for a few seconds, then he gave a final, gurgling rasp and was still. I held on for a little longer, I doubted that he was faking, but I didn’t want to have to do this again.
I rolled out from under him and took a second to collect myself. I realized my left forearm was bleeding from where he’d bit me. My nostrils were full of the coppery, meaty smell of blood, and before I knew it I was being sick on the slick linoleum floor of the office. I tried to puke as quietly as I could.
I let it all go. Took a deep breath, wiped my face off, and drove on. Fortunately, puking had destroyed my sense of smell, so that made things a little easier. After I settled the night vision goggles back into place, I could see that Robert was covering the other doors and the stairwell. I made myself retrieve the knife and wipe it off on the dead guy’s pants. I still had hot sticky blood all over me, and my stomach lurched again, but there was nothing left in it. I checked my rifle. The flashlight was switched off, and the infrared laser was switched on. I hit the pressure pad with my left hand and a green dot appeared in my
night vision goggles. Invisible to the naked eye, it was the only way I could effectively aim the gun with the goggles on.
Robert glanced back at me and I gave him a thumbs up. Over by the back door, the guy we’d darted was snoring loudly. We both listened for a minute, straining to hear anything over the dying rabbit noises coming from outside. Apparently, we’d managed not to disturb anyone else. So far so good.
Robert pointed at the stairs, then the other doors in the room we were in, and shrugged. He was asking if I wanted to clear the whole bottom floor before we moved up. Ideally, we’d clear all the rooms down here before we moved upstairs, lest somebody walk up behind us. Ideally, we’d also have about twelve other people for this little operation.
I pointed at the stairs. He nodded and started moving. The stairwell was narrow. We kept our feet near the junction of the stairs and the wall, to minimize any creaking. Robert went up slowly, gun pointed at the door at the top of the stairs, while I went up backward, gun pointing down.
At the top, he put his hand on the knob right as the dying rabbit noises stopped. We both froze, straining our ears. An indistinct mutter came from the other side of the door. I couldn’t tell if it was somebody talking, muttering in their sleep, or even a snore. After a few more seconds, we both jumped at a blare of music. It was some kind of strident classical music piece, with high pitched violins that set my teeth on end. Jesus. I bet the FBI probably employed somebody full time to do nothing but find disturbing shit to play on loudspeakers during sieges.
For some reason, the classical music made me think of my old girlfriend, Audrey. She was a classical cellist and had dropped me like a bad habit when I’d been framed for trying to kill my old partner. I wondered what she was doing right now.
I shoved that thought out of my head. It was weird what came to mind at times like this. Robert looked back at me and held up five fingers. He wanted to wait five minutes, probably to give whoever was sleeping on the other side of the door a chance to settle back in after the change in music. Laughlin had sent us a bunch of daily intelligence summaries via an anonymous Internet account. FBI snipers had been watching through the windows for days now, and the unwashed masses who had showed up unannounced were forced to bed down on the ground floor, while Marshall, Webb, and their goons had the top floor.
So we waited, even though neither one of us were keen to spend any more time in the narrow stairwell. One person at either the top or bottom could take us both out in short order.
While we waited, my earpiece crackled to life.
“Homerun,” Jack said. That meant he and Dalton were airborne in the Little Bird. They would keep the helicopter low, playing hide and seek in the canyons to keep their noise and visual signature low. It meant the clock was now ticking. The Little Bird only carried so much fuel, and it was our ride out.
“Fieldgoal.” Alex’s voice came next in my ear. It almost hurt to hear it, but I was glad she and Casey had made it safely to the hangar and were ready with their part of the plan.
After one song reached a crescendo, Robert moved forward. He opened the door and stepped to his left, so I hooked around the door frame and looked right.
The house had a big central living room with a vaulted ceiling and big glass windows, with smaller wings that came off either side. We stepped into the huge, restaurant-style kitchen, guns up and ready to fight, but there was no one there. The refrigerator stank, thanks to the power being cut off days ago, and there were dirty dishes and flies all around. We moved slowly through the kitchen to the set of double doors that led to the living and dining room. He looked through the gap, shook his head and motioned me forward. I stuck my goggles through the gap.
There were people all over the place. There had to be twenty people sleeping on couches, on chairs, and piles of blankets on the floor. Off to our right was the stairwell up to the top floor. It was the only way up.
As I watched a man with a rifle slung over his back walked around the room, looking out the windows. Apparently he was the sentry on duty. It was pretty shitty security, but most of the sleeping figures had a long gun next to them.
I pulled my head back in the door.
Robert leaned close to whisper in my ear.
“He doesn’t have night vision,” Robert said. “You reckon we can just brazen it out, act like we belong here?”
I thought about it. Aside from charging through the door and just pulling the trigger as fast as we could, it was the only thing I could think of.
I nodded.
“You need to lose the goggles,” Robert said.
He was right. Even in the moonlit living room, the bulbous goggles would give me away. I took them off and slid them into a pouche. I flipped a switch on the powerful light clipped to the handguard of my rifle. Now pressure on the pad would turn it on.
“If it goes to shit, you run for the stairs, I’ll cover you,” Robert said and stepped through the door.
We both had our rifles down by our sides, ready to come up. The sentry saw us and cocked his head. I gave him a wave,but didn’t make eye contact. We both just headed for the stairs.
He walked towards us, hesitated to look around the room, then walked towards us again. He was tall and skinny, and brought the rifle up across his chest but not pointed at us.
This isn’t going to work, I thought.
“Who are you?” he asked. The voice cracked. He sounded young. The intel reports had said there was nobody under 18, but if this kid was older, it wasn’t by much.
“We need to go upstairs and report to Marshall,” I stage-whispered.
“You… You need to stop.”
He started to bring the gun up. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Robert bring up his rifle. He activated the white light and suddenly the guy was illuminated like a deer in headlights: stick thin, hair like a scarecrow, scruffy attempt at a beard. Robert shot him twice and he dropped. Robert shut the light off and the room went dark again, but people were sitting up.
I sprinted for the stairs, knocking over an end table and a vase along the way. I had a vague impression of expensive furniture, rugs and wall hangings, then I was taking the stairs two at a time. Behind me, Robert was firing. His light would go on for half a second, he would fire two shots, then it would go out. I realized he was probably shooting people that were still lying down. It was a cold, murderous thing to do, but I understood why.
The stairwell was exposed to the living room. I saw a muzzle flash down below and a bullet blew out a section of hand rail, spraying me with wood splinters. Another whizzed by my head, then I was on the upstairs landing.
I stopped and poured some rounds into the living room, giving Robert some cover to run upstairs. I blipped my light on just in time to see two guys shoot at each other down below. One of them dropped and I shot the other. Hopefully, that would just add to the confusion.
Robert ran up the stairs changing magazines as he came. I dumped the rest of my magazine into the room below, hoping I was doing the right thing. The volume of fire coming back at me fell off, so there was that at least.
Two hallways stretched off from either side of the landing. I picked one, hoping I was guessing right, as I probably wouldn’t get a second guess.
“Moving,” I said as I finished changing magazines.
“Move,” Robert said. He pulled one of our two smoke grenades off his web gear and chucked it down the stairs.
I started down the hallway. A door opened to my left and a guy stepped out, wearing just his boxer shorts, but he had a rifle. In the glare of my light, I had a brief glimpse of a muscular dude with a beard and a bunch of tattoos before I planted two rounds in his chest and one in his head. He dropped, half in and half out of the door to his room. I shined my light inside and saw another guy picking up a rifle. I shot him too. Behind me, I heard Robert firing down the hallway.
More firing came from down the hall. Drywall dust filled the air and a piece of doorway trim flew off. I vaulted over the dead guy in the doorwa
y and dove into the room, hoping there wasn’t a third shooter inside. Fortunately, it was empty. There were a couple rifles leaned in the corner and some boxes of ammo on the floor. I wanted to replenish my rapidly dwindling supply, but didn’t have time.
The firing was constant. It was a roar so loud it was hard to pick out individual shots. I peeked out of the doorway I was in, and the guy in the doorway of the next room down the hall nearly took my head off. I jerked back in, spitting out more drywall dust, and was glad for the goggles I was wearing.
I took aim at the wall across from me, and pulled the trigger a few times, guessing where the guy would be standing. The heavy .308 rounds would go through drywall without even slowing down.
My answer was some rounds fired right back at me. A trio of shots blew through the wall, narrowly missing me. I dove to my left, and some more bullets passed through the space I’d just occupied. I grabbed one of the rifles leaning against the wall and ran the charging handle. It was a smaller caliber than mine, but it would do.
I dumped the whole magazine through the wall, hammering my already abused ears into oblivion. The bolt locked back and I dropped the rifle. The hot barrel scorched the carpet and I smelled burnt plastic. I thought for a second it had worked, then a couple of bullets came through the wall.
“Shit!” I screamed. This was exactly what I hadn’t wanted to happen. Our advance was bogged down, and we were fixed in place. Some of the gunshots were louder, from across the hallway, so Robert was still alive, but it was just a matter of time before we were overrun by Marshall’s loonies, or Hubbard’s hit squad stormed the place.
“Dent, turn on your strobe.” I could only faintly hear Dale’s voice in my earpiece.
There was an infrared strobe attached to my body armor. I didn’t know what Dale wanted, but rather than wasting time, I just flipped the switch.