Total Mayhem

by John Gilstrap

  “Oh, my God,” Gail said from the back. “Why aren’t they fighting?”

  “Want me to run it?” Boxers asked. “There’s enough of a gap we can get through with just tearing off a few fenders.”

  “Do it,” Jonathan said. If somebody wanted to prosecute him later, let them.

  Boxers leaned on the Batmobile’s horn and jammed the accelerator. As Fisherman’s Cove police officers dove to the sides, Boxers nailed the sweet spot of the cop cars, executing a modified PIT maneuver, normally used to end hot pursuits. Metal screamed as the armored beast plowed through, with much less felt impact than Jonathan had anticipated. The cop cars pivoted on their own axes to be nearly parallel to the road.

  “Hammer it,” Jonathan said. “When they get the gravel out of their teeth, I want to be out of range for pistols.”

  * * *

  Venice couldn’t stand waiting in safety. It didn’t feel right, and she couldn’t do it. She turned to Roman. “Baby, listen to me,” she said. “I can’t stay here. I don’t have time to explain it, but I just can’t.”

  Roman’s eyes reddened. “You can’t go out there.”

  “I have to.”

  “But there’s shooting! You don’t know how to shoot!”

  It had been a long, long time since Roman had looked like a little boy. Manhood was coming on strong, but now that he was scared—really, really scared—he looked ten years old again. It broke her heart.

  “Venny!” Mama gasped. “You cannot go out there.”

  She took her baby boy’s face in her hands. “Roman, honey, I love you more than anything. I’ll be okay. I’ll be back, I promise.”

  “I don’t want you to go!” he said.

  “I know.” She leaned in to kiss him, and he turned his face away. “You take care of Mama.”

  “I don’t need nobody to take care of me!” Mama insisted.

  “I’ll come with you,” Roman said.

  “No, you won’t,” Venice said. She moved to the door and opened it. The cacophony of the attack was deafening. “Be sure the door is locked behind me.”

  Roman was beginning to sob as she pulled the door closed. When it latched, she pressed her back against it and closed her eyes. “What am I doing?” she asked herself aloud.

  This had to happen.

  She took a few seconds to arrange a couple of books to make sure that Zulu looked like a closet again, and then she headed for the stairs. As she passed from the third floor to the second, she saw that the men had been moved from the foyer.

  “Derek!” she yelled. “Where are you?”

  No answer.

  She kept moving. “Derek! Where are you?”

  She was nearly at the bottom—nearly in the foyer—when Oscar stepped into view. He had blood on his uniform shirt. He was furious. “Ms. Alexander! Get back to Zulu.”

  “Are you hurt, Oscar?” she asked.

  Derek joined him, a rifle in his hands. “What the hell are you doing, Ven?”

  “I’m part of the team,” she said. “I have to be a part of defending it. What are we doing?”

  Derek and Oscar took big breaths to argue with her.

  “Don’t bother,” she said. “I’m not going back upstairs.”

  “Ah, screw it,” Derek said. He grabbed her arm far too roughly had it not been an emergency and pulled her along. The room to the left, just inside the foyer, the space that Venice had grown up knowing as the parlor, had long ago been converted to the reception office for Resurrection House. It now looked like a fortress. The security team had moved the antique reproduction cherry desks together to form a kind of barricade.

  “Get behind there,” Derek commanded.

  Two guards whose names she wasn’t sure of lay on the floor, moaning. Blood smeared the hands and face of one, but not the other. They both seemed barely conscious and in a lot of pain.

  “Oh, my God,” Venice gasped. “Are they okay?”

  “Hit in the plates,” Oscar said. He’d joined them behind the barricade and kneeled on one knee, using the desks as a rifle rest. “They’ll be okay. They’re hurtin’ though.”

  Venice stooped to look more closely at the wounded men and instantly felt terrible that she didn’t pay more attention to the staff, whose job always seemed so boring to her. She picked up one of the wounded men’s rifles, and when she turned back, she was startled to see Derek posed in a posture identical to Oscar’s, rifle to his shoulder and aiming at the front door. “How do you know about these things?” she asked.

  He broke his intense focus on the front door and looked at the M4 she held in her hand. “It’s a rifle,” he said. “I know about them because of things I did that you don’t know about. See that fire selector lever on the left side next to the trigger? Turn it up to the single bullet icon and it’s ready to shoot. Don’t touch the trigger till you’re ready to kill someone.”

  Jonathan had taken Venice shooting before, so she wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with an M4, but it felt awkward and wrong to shoulder the butt stock this time. She didn’t know if she’d be able to kill anyone.

  “Do we have a plan?” she asked.

  “Far as I know, this is it,” Derek said. “Hunker down and wait.”

  Oscar explained, “We’re rolling the dice that the exterior teams and the police will take them out. If they don’t and they get through, we fight them in here.”

  Venice ran her hands over the wood surface of the desk. “Will this stop bullets?”

  “Won’t even slow ’em down,” Oscar said. “That’s why you shouldn’t be here. Why Mr. Grave is gonna fire me when he finds out you’re here. Guess it won’t matter all that much if we’re all dead.”

  “Please go back to the safe room,” Derek said. This time when he gripped her hand, his touch was gentle.

  “No, not now,” Oscar said. “That window of opportunity is closed. Pretty soon, that stairway’s gonna be a kill zone. It’ll be the place not to be. That’s a good door with a good lock, and the structure’s all reinforced, but this place ain’t built for what’s happenin’ to it.”

  As if his words had summoned the devil, the wall to their left was pummeled with a fusillade of bullets. The whole structure seemed to vibrate under the assault, and huge spiders erupted in the armored glass of the front windows.

  “This could be it,” Oscar said.

  * * *

  When Boxers slid the turn onto Church Street and headed down the hill toward the mansion, the night vibrated with gunfire. Jonathan saw a few police officers along the curb, using their engine blocks as cover, and he saw muzzle flashes up on the yard, closer to the mansion.

  He knew exactly what was going on. The Fisherman’s Cove PD was a small force that was underpaid and undertrained. Their orders in situations like this were to isolate the hazard and wait for backup. Doug might have gotten them fired up for a fight, but he wasn’t here yet to lead them.

  “Don’t even slow down,” Jonathan ordered. “See what this beast can do to a fence.” He pointed to the nearest corner of the steel fence. It was far enough away from the cops’ position that he hoped they wouldn’t open fire, and this section of fence was considerably less hardened than the front gate.

  Boxers sped up. “I think this is going to righteously suck,” he said. “Check your belts.”

  They had to be doing sixty-five, seventy miles an hour when the Hummer hit the curb, took some air, and then smashed into the gate. Jonathan’s world erupted in noise and heat and the stench of powder as the airbags initiated and punched him in the face.

  “Goddamn!” Boxers yelled.

  “Everybody okay?” Jonathan asked.

  He was already pushing his door open before he heard the answers. Hugging his M27 close to his chest, he pulled the door latch and tumbled out onto the ground. He hit hard, squarely on the hunk of steel that was his .45. That was going to leave a mark. He glanced back and up and saw Gail press the back door open, and she came out feet first. She had some blood over her eye, but
it didn’t seem to be a big deal.

  On the far side of the Batmobile, he saw Boxers working his way over the seats to come out Jonathan’s door. He was bleeding from his head, too, but seemed similarly unfazed. As for the Batmobile, well, he’d been thinking about getting a new one, anyway.

  “Follow me,” Jonathan said. He started running toward the house.

  “What’s the plan?” Gail asked.

  Boxers said, “I don’t think we have one. Maybe just a general ass-kicking.”

  Jonathan heard the words, but he didn’t look back and he didn’t slow. He’d never felt this level of disorganization before. There always had to be a plan. It was suicidal to barge into a gun battle without some organization. Oscar had already informed him that he didn’t have time to read Jonathan in on all the shit they were doing, and he wasn’t going to interrupt the guys in the yard.

  He keyed his mic as he ran. “Security team, this is Security Ten. We are on the property and moving in to join the fight from the northeast side. Don’t shoot the friendlies.”

  No one acknowledged, but from the volume of fire, he figured they had their hands full.

  As he sprinted across the yard, he looked back at the Rez House dormitory building and saw that the guards there remained in position, just as they were trained to do. If the attack on the mansion was a feint to draw attention away from an attack on the kids, there probably weren’t enough guards to repel it, but they’d be able to slow them down.

  Seeing Doug Kramer’s troops cowering behind their cruisers launched a swell of anger. How could they stand by and watch others in uniform blast away in a gunfight and not do something?

  Jonathan saw one of his guys on the ground. He slowed and ran backward a few steps while pointing to the downed guard. “Gunslinger!” he yelled. “Take care of him.”

  Then he refocused on getting into the fight.

  Finally, as he cleared the last corner, he saw three of his guards and two town cops hunkered down next to the brick as a blast of full-auto fire chewed up the façade.

  “Friendlies behind you!” Jonathan yelled, and he also transmitted.

  One of them turned at the sound of his voice. It was Danny Palmer, and he looked fully engaged.

  “Thank God, sir,” he said. “They want the house. State troopers are still ten minutes out, and most of the townies won’t come in.”

  Boxers had joined him, and a few seconds later, Gail was there, too. The simple shake of her head told him that there’d been no medical care to be rendered for the fallen guard.

  “We can’t just stay here,” Jonathan said. “I’m in command now.”

  “These guys know what they’re doing, sir,” Danny said. “They’re advancing one tree at a time, and their fire is accurate as hell. Half the time, we don’t even know where they are.”

  “Have you tried flanking from the other side?”

  “We’ve got a guy over there already. Stacy Allen. We’ve kept them slowed down, but they’re not giving up.”

  Jonathan flipped down his NVGs. “Let’s see what happens.” He started to move out to sprint to a tree for himself, but before he could move, two sustained bursts of fire chewed up their corner of the structure. Jonathan figured thirty rounds each.

  The bad guys were covering for something with all that gunfire, and whatever it was, it was bad for the good guys. Jonathan chose the lull after the second fusillade—when the guy was changing mags—to make his move. He shouldered his M27 and sprinted out into the open, charging across the yard to pick a tree of his own. It was massive—a hickory, he thought, but maybe not—and it gave him clear visual access to the front of the mansion.

  He pressed his transmit button. “Friendlies in the front yard. Stacy Allen, sorry I don’t know your radio handle. Cease fire and take cover.”

  Peering from behind his tree, he scanned for targets and switched back to VOX. “Hey Danny, should I be the only good guy out here?”

  “As far as I know, but I can’t say for sure. But stand by for two more.”

  The corner of the mansion that Jonathan had just left erupted in outgoing gunfire, sending dozens of rounds downrange and chewing up the real estate. As he looked back to see what was going on, he saw Boxers running out to meet him at his tree, closely trailed by Gail.

  “We’re a team goddammit,” Boxers said as they slid behind the cover. “Next time you forget that, I’ll beat you to death.”

  “While this is very intimate,” Jonathan said, “We can’t—”

  The muzzle of a rifle peeked out from behind a tree near the front door, much closer to the door than Jonathan thought they’d be—much, much closer than he wanted them to be. Jonathan chewed up the tree with a ten-round rip of his own. He didn’t expect to hit the shooter, but he made him jump back.

  “I’m gonna flank him,” Boxers said, and he was off at a run. He ran past the closest tree to get behind another one in his advance to the shooter. He was three strides away when the ground around him erupted in bullet hits.

  Grass and dirt flew, and Boxers fell.

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Kellner was surprised by the intensity and competence of the opposition. These guys were better than any rent-a-cop security force he’d encountered in the past. Anywhere else, on any other day, this fight would have been over in seconds, and Iceman would have been in and out with his revenge card filled. But this fight was going on ten minutes old, and they hadn’t breached the entrance yet.

  As they advanced up the yard, he’d fired ten or twelve rounds at the front door, but they didn’t penetrate. That meant they’d have to make an explosive entry, but to do that, they had to get a charge on the door, and these guys wouldn’t give them enough room to breathe. It seemed that every ten yards cost them fifty rounds of ammunition, and his pouches were about empty.

  This was a loser of an operation. It had been that way from the first seconds when Iceman told him about it, and it was just getting worse. It wouldn’t be long before these rubes got their act together, and then the big guns would arrive. SWAT teams, helicopters, and tanks, for all he knew.

  But this current plan had legs. He’d just ripped a full thirty-round mag at that far corner of the building to keep the security guys’ heads down long enough for Iceman to dash out and slap a GPC on the front door’s lock, and then to dash back again.

  Predictably, they unloaded in retaliation, but no one was hurt, and the dwindling ammo problem worked both ways.

  When his cover got chewed up by shots coming from a new direction, he understood what had happened. They were moving for position.

  That thought had just touched his brain when Iceman opened up from his cover behind the porch stairs.

  “Saw one, got one!” he shouted. “Cover your ears.”

  The breaching charge detonated. Damn things were always louder that he thought they’d be.

  * * *

  “I’m fine,” Big Guy said before Jonathan had a chance to ask. “Did you see—”

  Jonathan saw the flash from the door half a second before the blast made it to him, and he knew instantly that they’d somehow gotten an explosive pack on the door and blown it.

  “They breached the front door,” he declared on the radio. They’d made their intentions clear, and now he had a target to watch.

  Jonathan charged forward, rifle up and ready, sweeping from the door to the trees, searching for targets. He tried to use cover, but he had to get to the house before the assassins did. Once they started shooting up inside, it could be—

  A rifle chattered full-auto on his right, and he dove for the dirt as bullets raked everything everywhere. It was covering fire, and Jonathan knew instinctively that the bad guys were entering the mansion.

  The instant the shooting stopped, Jonathan was on his feet again and advancing on the source of the fire.

  That’s when he heard gunfire and screaming from inside the house.

  “Oh, shit,” Jonathan said. “They’re inside.”

/>   * * *

  The explosion at the door filled the foyer and office with shrapnel, wood chips, glass, and an impossible amount of dust. In the same instant, it obliterated Venice’s sense of hearing. The power of the overpressure was something she’d never felt before. It knocked her back onto her butt on the floor.

  But she could still hear the presence of noise, even though she could not make out what exactly the sounds were.

  Boom-boom-boom-boom . . .

  Oscar was still on his knee, shooting his rifle into the foyer, and Venice thought just what a mess it was going to be to clean all of this up.

  Somebody grabbed her by the back of her shirt and pulled hard. She felt the fabric rip, and then she saw Oscar’s jaw rip from his face. It spun sideways, as if anxious to have a conversation with his ear. And then the top of his head came off.

  Boom-boom-boom-boom.

  Those noises seemed much closer, and then she understood. It was as if her head had cleared, jump-started. Her shirt was tight because Derek was trying to pull her to safety. The incessant booming was him firing his rifle to save her life.

  “Where’s my rifle?” she said, but her words sounded as if they were coming from the end of a long tube.

  When she finally found her feet, she took over as lead. It was her house, after all. She knew where all the doors and rooms were. This next room behind the reception area was the headmistress’s office. It was the end of the line. She led Derek to a hard turn to the right, which led them out into a hallway of classrooms, blocked off from the foyer by secure double doors.

  The doors on either side led to expanses of chairs and desks and whiteboards—nothing that could be used as a weapon.

  “Stay here,” Derek said. “Running isn’t fighting. I have to—”

  His words were cut off by a second explosion, and this one obliterated the security doors.

  She seemed to be pulling Derek now, instead of the other way around. Without even looking behind, they dashed in to Room 4, Mrs. Hirsch’s first grade classroom, where the walls were decorated with orange Jack-o’-lanterns on black paper.

  “No sense hiding!” a man yelled.