End Game

by John Gilstrap

  Jolaine, on the other hand, stood tall, allowing the body of the car to serve as a shield as she fired two-and three-shot combinations at the attackers. Graham was watching when the slide on the top of her pistol locked open.

  Oh, shit, she’s out of bullets.

  Not yet, she wasn’t. With her eyes never leaving the people she was shooting at, she dropped the clip—he thought that’s what it was called—out of the bottom of her gun, and then she produced another one from somewhere under her shirt and slapped it into place. She started firing again.

  “How many more of those do you have?” he asked.

  She didn’t answer, and he interpreted the silence as the worst kind of news. He didn’t know how many bullets she had left, but it didn’t take a genius to know that once they were gone, both he and Jolaine would be dead unless she somehow killed them all first.

  “I’m getting the machine gun,” he said.

  “The hell you are!”

  “The hell I’m not!” Graham was tired of hiding, and he was tired of being a victim. Like before, when all this shooting shit was just a thought in his head, he was not going to die hiding. Only cowards died hiding. His dad died shooting, and his mom, if she had in fact been killed, died shooting. He was going to be part of the family tradition.

  Graham dropped back down onto the ground to get behind the steel, and he moved to the rear door.

  “Graham!” Jolaine yelled.

  “I’m getting in the friggin’ car!” he yelled. “What do you want from me?”

  He pulled the door open and slid like a snake along the floor. He lost a flip-flop in the process, but he’d worry about that later. Or, he wouldn’t. Right now, it didn’t matter. His legs were still hanging out the door when he reached up and pulled down the armrest in the middle of the backseat. He was working a hunch, and it proved to be correct. There was a hatch behind the armrest that opened up to the trunk. If some asshole hadn’t locked it—

  He pulled and it opened.

  Yes!

  There weren’t many advantages to being short and skinny when you’re fourteen years old—in fact, before today, he wouldn’t have been able to name one—but it turned out that being able to slither into a tiny space to retrieve a machine gun was one of them.

  He entered like Superman, his arms outstretched over his head, and when his shoulders were clear, he started feeling around. This space defined darkness. But for the tiny streams of light that penetrated through the bullet holes, the blackness would have been perfect, absolute. That dim light, however, provided only shadows, no definition. As the world continued to explode outside, his hands found what he thought might have been a lug wrench, and also something that felt squishy that he didn’t like touching at all.

  There it was! His hand landed on the tip of the barrel first—the muzzle and the sight—and he grabbed it. As he backed out of the hole, it occurred to him that the muzzle was pointed directly at his forehead—his Scout Camp counselor had pounded them on the importance of never allowing a gun to point at anything you weren’t willing to destroy—but now was not the time.

  His shoulder cleared the hole, and two seconds later, he had the rifle in his hands.

  He tumbled back out onto the parking lot just as Jolaine’s gun locked open again. She looked at it with anger, as if it had betrayed her.

  “Jolaine!” he yelled.

  Her eyes darted first to him, and then to the rifle he held. She smiled and ducked below the level of the fender just long enough to grab the carbine. “Good for you,” she said, and she rumpled his hair. “Now go back in there and get the rest of the ammunition. I’ve got a bunch of extra magazines in pouches. Hurry!”

  Graham was a total shit for not obeying her orders, but when this was over, she was going to have to give him a hug. Jolaine didn’t know what she’d been thinking when she locked her only decent weapon into the trunk of her car, but as the Glock ejected her last shell casing, the appearance of the M4 felt like a gift from God—like a sign that they were destined to survive this round.

  Whoever their attackers were, they were not experienced warriors. They fought as if they were afraid of being shot. Of course, everyone in a firefight was afraid of getting shot, but those who were experienced understood that the best way to avoid catching a bullet was to aim your shots and make sure they counted. As a mentor of hers had once said, the secret is to shoot first, shoot fast, and shoot well. As an added bonus, it never hurt to shoot dirty, too.

  That first kill—dropping the driver of the first vehicle—had rattled the attackers, and despite their larger numbers, that rattling had given her the advantage. At least for as long as her ammunition held out.

  Now that she was armed with thirty rounds of 5.56 millimeter devastation, the other team was going to learn just how bad a mistake they’d made.

  Because she was the last person to handle the M4, she knew that a round was already chambered. She used her thumb to change the selector switch from safe to single-shot and she rose again. With the weapon pressed against her shoulder, she moved from behind the Mercedes and advanced on the SUVs and their cowering occupants.

  Way back when she’d first loaded the magazines for her carbine, the anticipated threat had been vehicle-borne kidnapping, and as a result she’d loaded them with armor-piercing ammunition. As she stepped out, she scanned for targets. Where she saw legs on the ground, she zeroed in on a spot about three feet north of the legs and fired through the steel panels that obscured the torsos. The titanium-tipped bullets hit with enough energy, concentrated at an infinitesimally small surface area, to liquefy the steel at the point of contact, only to pass through, intact, to pierce whatever—whoever—lay behind the shield.

  Two attackers hit, two attackers killed, for a total of five dead, so far.

  There had to be at least one more, maybe several. Not only had she thought she’d seen them when they drove up, but it made no sense to have two vehicles with only five people. In a perfect world, the smart move would be to wait them out, let them make the first move, and then pick them off when they did. But this much gunfire and this many bodies were going to attract a lot of attention, and that attention was going to come with badges and guns. She didn’t want any of that. They couldn’t afford any of that. There was no way to explain the inexplicable.

  “Graham,” she said. She never took her eyes off the real estate in front of her.

  “Right here.”

  “Are you hurt?”

  “No, I’m fine. I have the extra bullets.”

  “Okay, good. Now, get out, stay behind cover and look on the ground near the front of the car. Do you see the keys? I dropped them and they should be down there.”

  She heard him moving.

  “Got them.”

  “Have you ever driven a car?” she asked.

  “I don’t have my license.”

  “Different question. Have you ever—” She stopped the question because the answer was irrelevant. “You’re about to drive the car,” she said. “Get behind the wheel and start it up.”

  “But there’s broken glass—”

  “Graham!”

  “Okay, okay.”

  Jolaine saw movement behind the SUV that was farthest from her. A crouched bad guy was duckwalking to get position behind the engine block for better cover. She didn’t see the man as much as she saw the gun barrel. He held it a little too high.

  Jolaine switched the selector from semi- to full-auto and fired a three-round burst into the engine block. Even the armor-piercing rounds wouldn’t penetrate the thickness of the engine, but they would burrow deeply enough to disable the motor and to give the guy a religious experience. Just for good measure, she fired another three-round burst through the other SUV. There would likely be survivors among the attackers, and she didn’t want them to have a way out.

  She had just begun to wonder what Graham was doing when the Mercedes engine turned over and then revved as Graham gave it way too much gas. “Get in!” he
yelled. “We’re ready.”

  “Hold on a second,” Jolaine replied. That guy behind the fender, and whatever other friends he had left, were a problem. She dared not turn her back on—

  There were two of them side by side and they popped up together, their weapons at the ready. They opened fire, on full-auto. They emerged from precisely the spot where Jolaine had been watching, one of them standing into the red dot of her gun sight. She dropped him with a bullet to his chin.

  His friend reacted with impressive speed, diving back for cover while the head mist still hung in the air. Jolaine swung her aim and got off a shot, but it wasn’t a clean hit. She thought she saw an impact on his shoulder as he fell, but she couldn’t be certain. She needed to be certain.

  With her M4 at the ready, pressed in tightly and her finger outside the trigger guard, she advanced on the spot where he fell. Behind her, she heard Graham plead for her to get back into the car, his voice squeaky with panic. But their only route out of the parking lot was through these guys, and that would mean driving through the kill zone of an ambush. Unacceptable.

  Jolaine had lost track of time since the shoot-out began, but she was confident that it was still under two minutes. The other cars in the parking lot meant that other guests were either watching through windows—a foolish choice—or cowering in corners. Either way, lots of phone calls were being made to 911, and that meant she and Graham were in a hurry.

  Impossibly red blood traced rivulets in the uneven pavement of the lot, almost all of it from the ruined head of the first shooter to pop up from behind the second SUV.

  “Jolaine, please don’t!” Graham cried.

  She ignored him. There’d be time to explain later. Now she needed to concentrate on the potential threats. She heard the Mercedes transmission slip into gear and she knew without looking that Graham was backing out of the parking spot to be prepared to drive off. She was fine with that so long as he did not try to pass her.

  Or panic and leave me behind. That thought made her regret that she’d crippled the other vehicles.

  As she carefully turned the corner around the front bumper of the target SUV, her mind filtered out the hideous sight of the dead man with the exposed brain and instead scanned for signs of the living. She led with her carbine as she whipped around the corner to encounter whatever threat lay beyond.

  The second man she’d hit sat against the rear wheel of the vehicle, his legs outstretched, his face gray and twisted in agony. His right arm and the right side of his shirt glistened with blood. She’d hit him harder than she’d thought. His rifle—she saw now that it was an MP5—lay on the ground next to him, and he made no effort to reach for it.

  Keeping low, Jolaine kicked the weapon away and turned her attention to the rest of the parking lot, searching for additional targets. Movement close to her rear caused her to whirl, but she broke her aim when she saw that it was Graham with the Mercedes.

  She held up her hand to tell him to stop, and said, “Don’t move any closer, Graham, and don’t get out of the car.” Her eyes never stopped scanning all compass points. “Keep an eye out for other people and tell me anything you see.”

  “We need to go, Jolaine,” Graham said. “Please, let’s just go.”

  “Ten seconds,” she said. She turned her attention to the wounded man. “Who are you? Why are you attacking us?”

  The man moved slowly, as if lifting his head consumed all of his energy. “Not you,” he said with a heavy accent that sounded nearly identical to that of Bernard Mitchell. “The boy. The boy will get you killed. We do not care about you.”

  “Why him? What did he do?”

  “He has something that belongs to us,” the man said. Bloody froth bubbled at the corners of his mouth, and Jolaine realized that she’d hit his lung. “He has codes.”

  “What codes?”

  The man coughed, launching a pink spray that somehow missed Jolaine. “Don’t be a fool. He needs to follow protocol, then this all ends.”

  “What is going on?” Jolaine said. She heard an edge of desperation in her own voice.

  “Follow protocol. Otherwise, everyone else wants to kill him. To kill you, too.”

  “Everyone,” Jolaine repeated. “Who is everyone?”

  “Without protocol, everyone is everyone. Russians, Americans, Israelis, Chinese. Everyone.”

  “But why?”

  Sirens grew louder in the distance.

  “Please tell me why.”

  The man managed a laugh that triggered a gout of blood from his mouth. He spat but made no effort to wipe it away. “First you kill me and then you ask for favor,” he said. “You have balls. Protocol is your only way to live,” he said.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Boy knows. Ask him. Go. Go now and run. Live quickly because I think you will die soon.”

  “Jolaine!” Graham yelled. “They’re coming! Don’t you hear the sirens?”

  She watched the wounded man’s smile, his contentment obvious. He’d said all he intended to say, and would be dead in minutes.

  Jolaine stood and walked around to the driver’s door of the Mercedes. “Out,” she said. “I’m driving.”

  “Thank God,” Graham said. He ran to the other side.

  His ass had barely touched the seat before she hit the gas and they were on their way.

  Protocol is your only way to live.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  At one level, Jonathan thought that Venice had the hardest job of all of them. While she didn’t get shot at—well, except for that one time—she had the burden of waiting and listening until someone chimed in with a sitrep. Jonathan didn’t think he’d be able to do it.

  It was nearly four in the afternoon now, and the sun hung high and hot over the gently rolling terrain.

  “According to Venice’s satellite downloads, this isn’t going to be an easy house to find,” Jonathan said. He knew they were close, but the unrelenting woods were loath to give up driveways. “What’s that up there?” A medical caduceus had been nailed to an otherwise unremarkable tree.

  “I see a cross and tangled snakes,” Boxers said. “Doctor shit.”

  They turned into the drive, through the heavy woods to another turn at another caduceus, and up to the front of the house. A nice place, bigger than he was expecting, but nothing remarkable in its two-story design.

  “Ready for things to get interesting?” Big Guy asked.

  “Soon enough,” Jonathan said. “Go to Vox.” From this point on, everything they said would be live on the radio, without having to push a transmit button. “Mother Hen, Scorpion,” he said.

  Ten seconds passed. “Go ahead, Scorpion,” Venice said. “I’m here. Nice to hear from you. It’s been a while.”

  “Big Guy and I are home now,” Jonathan said, knowing that she’d understand them to be at the target house. “How are your eyes?”

  “Still blind,” she answered.

  Jonathan had been hoping for satellite support from SkysEye, a satellite imagery service established by his now fabulously wealthy former Unit compatriot named Lee Burns. Built with private funds under the auspices of assisting in petroleum exploration, the SkysEye network had proven to be extraordinarily helpful to Jonathan over the course of his freelance years—well worth the staggering price tag—providing nearly military-quality imagery of fine details from a couple hundred miles in the sky.

  Given their past relationship, and the nature of the missions upon which Jonathan embarked, Lee Burns typically moved heaven and earth to accommodate his needs. Sometimes, though, the timing just didn’t work out. Lee had a business to run, after all, and Jonathan imagined that sometimes it would be hard to tell the representatives of Mega-rich Oil Company that their multimillion-dollar contract would have to wait while the system was repurposed to support an illegal operation.

  “Big Guy and I are both on VOX,” Jonathan said. “The security plan is hot now.” The security plan mandated situatio
n reports—sitreps—every seven minutes, or more frequently if the situation warranted. Translated, that meant that the risks of getting hurt had just multiplied.

  “Speak up, Big Guy,” Venice said.

  “Right here,” Boxers replied, thus completing the radio check.

  “I’ll take the front,” Jonathan said, “and you take the back. When we’re both in position, I’ll knock. If someone answers, we’ll play it by ear. If they don’t, we’ll crash the door.”

  As an afterthought, Jonathan added, “Mother Hen, before we make a mess here, you are one hundred percent sure that this is the house where the car is registered, right?”

  “One thousand percent,” Venice replied.

  Jonathan looked to Boxers, and Big Guy nodded. “All right, then. Report when you’re in place.”

  As Boxers disappeared toward the black side of the building, Jonathan headed toward the white side. Jonathan estimated the age of the place at around thirty years—old enough to need new fascia board but not so old for the need to be urgent. Having traveled the world several times over, mostly focused on the dirty bits that normal people tried to avoid, he’d seen all different terrains, from the vertical to the flat. It occurred to him as he looked back the way they’d come that this place was just boring.

  Jonathan hated approaching a building that he only suspected concealed a bad guy. If he knew for a fact that an enemy was in place, he could approach with guns blazing. When less than certain, the mere presence of a firearm could turn a benign situation violent, converting otherwise good guys into bad when they reacted with legitimate fear at the sight of the weapons.

  Jonathan walked warily down the weed-infested brick sidewalk with his Colt holstered and concealed by his denim jacket. If needed, he could draw the weapon and have shots downrange in two seconds, but that brought him little comfort. Not many gunfights lasted as long as two seconds.

  As he closed the last few feet to the front door, he stopped short as his attention was drawn to the doorjamb. The wood near the dead bolt was splintered, hunks of wood avulsed from the rabbet. The effect was to leave a giant scar of raw, unpainted wood.