by J. L. Salter
“I’m telling you, man. Somebody’s up there with a cannon shooting groceries at us!” Herve examined a citrus seed which had nearly embedded itself into his cheek.
Dante looked over at runner H9, knocked cold by the third orange of the most recent Vegge-zilla barrage. It was more curiosity than concern. The unconscious man’s face looked like Rocky Balboa had just creamed him.
“Come on.” Foss poked Herve’s shoulder. “We’re going back up to that big car.”
Herve started to ask why, but his leader was already moving, low and fast. The secundo followed, albeit skeptically.
****
Task Force Wade
Joe’s phone rang and Roger answered without putting his glasses on. “Okay, great!” He flipped the phone shut and turned back to Wade. “Kelly says your third orange nailed a bad guy. Nice shooting!” Roger slapped the sweaty upper back of the mortar’s inventor.
Wade’s satisfied smile came from deep inside. He patted the warm Vegge-zilla pipe lovingly. He had guessed the oranges would fly straightest — good combination of density and symmetry. He kept his eyes along the sight line of the barrel and Pete’s retaining wall. “How many oranges we got left?”
****
Task Force Mitchell
After scrambling from the safety and concealment of the huge dirt mounds, Mitch’s Marauders quickly reached the stake-bed — the truck nearest them and farthest from the barricade. They were still undetected by the enemy. The task force had heard the third grouping of Wade’s mortar fire while they were running, but none of them could tell where the rounds had landed.
“Do you see a driver?” Mitch strained his own eyes.
Steve craned his neck. “No driver. But he left the truck running.”
“Wonder where he’s at?” Gary scanned enemy territory.
Mitch tugged on Gary’s BDU sleeve. “Can you unhook that trailer?”
“Give me a kilo of C-4 and I’ll vaporize it.”
“It’s loaded with stolen merchandise.” Mitch frowned again slightly. Effective. “I don’t want it blown up, I just want it sideways behind that truck, so the truck can’t get away.”
“Easier to just disable the truck.” Gary rolled his eyes so Steve could see.
“How?” Mitch the leader.
“Watch.” Gary casually walked around to the cab, opened the door, turned off the ignition and put the key in his pocket. Then he pulled a lever and the hood latch popped loose. He went to the front, climbed up on the high bumper, and lifted the hood. Gary grabbed the six wires from the distributor cap and jerked them out in one staggered movement. He returned, having left the hood up and the driver door open. “Like that.” The wires dangled from his strong hand and trailed on the macadam.
“Okay.” Mitch grunted. “Well, Pete said from here I’m to turn you and Steve loose. Just neutralize as many of those gangsters as you can.”
Gary grinned. “Been looking forward to it.”
Steve actually rubbed his hands together maliciously.
“Listen, we’re supposed to delay these gangsters and remove their effectiveness.” Mitch realized he couldn’t speak very clearly while scowling. “We’re not trying to kill these guys unless it’s absolutely necessary.”
“Necessary is the grandmother of invention.” Steve’s mangled platitude was appropriately solemn.
Mitch shrugged. “Oh, Pete also said we’re supposed to keep the element of surprise going as long as possible.”
Gary patted his shoulder. “It’ll be a surprise all right, for whoever’s left. Steve, hitch up your britches. We’re going hunting.”
From the trailer, Steve picked up a tire iron and wiped it off with a greasy rag. “We don’t need to look real far — here comes somebody now.” He indicated the duplex on the southwest corner of North Pleasant and Placid.
About sixty feet away, two haulers emerged from a household with arms full: TV, DVD player, et cetera. Both stared at the stake-bed truck, with the hood propped up and five strangers standing behind its trailer, and looked distinctly surprised. Each spent a brief moment wondering if Foss had wisely hired additional helpers. Both also wondered where driver H6 was.
Gary and Steve were already moving and closed the distance before the astonished gangsters could even empty their hands. D11, the smaller white thug, finally dropped his load and reached around behind his waist.
In a whisper that would carry sideways across a football field, Mitch called out, “Gun!”
Gary dropped his distributor wires and went for D11’s hand as Steve smacked his head with the tire iron. In a Three Stooges episode, it would have been a dull clang by the Foley operator. But in real life, it was a sickening thud and a short anguished groan before D11 crumbled to the ground.
D14, the larger black crook still holding his stolen load, stared in disbelief. His mouth hung open and he started to speak, but Steve conked him on the head also. The first blow only stunned him. Must have a really thick skull. So Steve whacked him again. D14 went to his knees still holding the TV set. Then he crumpled forward.
Steve stood over D14 to be sure he was out and then checked for weapons. None.
Gary grabbed the gun from D11 and searched for an additional magazine. “No extra ammo. Just what’s in the pistol.” He released the magazine latch and checked the contents. “Full. These guys must not have expected any trouble. Black one’s not armed at all and the white creep had his pistol in carry mode. Didn’t even have a round in the chamber. Nice, 10 mm.” He’d seen that caliber pistol in gun ads but never held one. Gary re-inserted the magazine, chambered a round with the slide, pulled back the hammer, and put the safety on. “Cocked and locked.” He tucked it in the front of his waistband.
With considerable exertion, Steve rolled the large unconscious D14 off the TV and stuffed the rag in his mouth. “Big one ain’t going anywhere.”
With one eye on the activity upstreet, Mitch had rejoined them. “How long you figure he’ll be out?”
“Half-hour, maybe longer.” Gary shrugged.
“Better take out the gag or he might suffocate.”
Steve looked distinctly perturbed. “You’re real new at this, ain’t you, Rot-Cee?
“Look, Pete put me in charge, I didn’t volunteer.” Mitch tried to scowl for effect, but he just looked peeved. “We want this guy neutralized but he doesn’t have to be dead.”
Steve cursed, mostly under his breath.
Gary roughly pulled out the gag and tossed it to the ground.
Meanwhile, D11 moved slightly and moaned loudly.
“Help me tie up this little one.” Gary tore a long spark plug wire from the distributor cap harness and hog-tied the crook’s wrists and ankles.
“You gonna squawk?” Steve addressed the bound small man.
D11 just spit toward him.
“Gimme that greasy rag, Gary.” Retrieving it from the ground, Steve stuffed the filthy rag in D11’s mouth. “There. We’ll keep that ugly yap stopped up ‘til you learn some manners.”
Gary and Steve having just rendered two haulers ineffective, another robber emerged from the nearer half of that same duplex. This was a short wiry Hispanic hauler, known by Foss as H12.
Mitch pointed and yelled, “Bogey!” It was the only noun he could think of.
Gary whipped out the pistol and pointed it directly between the eyes of H12. “Don’t even twitch. I hadn’t killed anybody yet today.” He advanced as quickly as a panther, though considerably less graceful due to his bad knee.
H12’s eyes were wide with fear and he froze, almost. Actually, momentum caused the wiry man to take another step. Steve bounded over and smashed his skull, hard; H12 collapsed on the first whack. Then Steve dropped his tire iron and searched the short crook for a weapon. “Aw, nuts. This punk’s only carrying a little .380.”
“You can always hang on to your trusty tire iron.” Gary didn’t grin. “Has he got extra ammo?”
Steve searched roughly. “Nope. Just what’s in th
e pistol.” He checked the full magazine, pulled back the slide to expose the empty chamber, and then sniffed deeply. “He hasn’t fired recently either.”
From the third truck and trailer still parked on North Pleasant, nothing important was visible: neither the barricade nor the cluster of gangsters around the largest van. All Mitch’s Marauders could see was the rear of the second, medium-sized truck. The driver and loader had temporarily abandoned their vehicle and were up with the gaggle behind the front van.
****
Barricade
At the barricade Pete hustled up and down the line and told his troops to remain ready, but continue to hold their fire. Other than Pete’s warning signal and Wade’s mortar, the defenders had not yet fired a shot. Pete told Leo to relay that instruction to Herb in Pete’s own garage and told Earl to transmit it to Melvin, in Leo’s garage. Watching the bizarre combination of loud whispers and convoluted hand motions from Leo and Earl would have been high comedy if so much weren’t at stake.
Earl turned from his own rather unsatisfactory signaling efforts, just as Chico stood up behind Art’s parked car and waved to the toady black man, farther down the hill. Either interpreting that as a signal the enemy would begin firing or simply having a slightly anxious trigger finger himself, Earl somehow nudged the release valve on his brand new turbo-power sprayer wand. All of that device’s TV pitch men would have been proud; Earl staggered as a violent burst of water surged eighty-five feet and carried nearly a quart of his own potent urine. It hit Herve square in the face, neck, and upper chest.
Herve shrieked, Foss fired his 9 mm toward the barricade, and half a dozen other firearms began shooting from around the trucks slightly behind. Foss and Herve had to flatten to the pavement to stay out of crossfire.
From the barricade, the first actual gunfire was Bernie’s Long Tom and the resulting recoil nearly knocked the frail octogenarian from the support of his wheeled walker.
After hearing the Long Tom’s distinctive boom and thinking he was directly defending a neighbor, Deaf Lyin’ Leo fired his Garand toward the large van. Art shot one barrel of the over/under merely because it’s contagious when somebody immediately adjacent discharges a weapon.
Chet held his fire, which were blanks anyway. Isaiah started to shoot his revolver, but remembered he had only four cartridges, so he saved them.
Melvin and Herb each fired one round from their concealed spots in the garages.
Pete’s deer rifle remained silent.
Caught up in the noise and excitement, Irene extended her spiked Springfield and yelled, “Bang!”
****
Opposing Force
At first Foss was startled at the sudden firing. But his interest immediately shifted to the shooting from inside the two garages linked by the barricade of vehicles. He had not even realized any residents were in those garages, much less that they were armed. That was exactly the kind of intel Foss needed and he yelled back to his own troops to cease fire so he could get off his belly.
Herve frantically rubbed at his face and eyes and screeched that he’d been poisoned by monkey pee. It’s not clear how he discerned the type of mammal responsible for such potent liquid body waste, but it doubtless related to acidic properties.
An apathetic Foss seemed skeptical that Herve had even seen a live monkey, much less ever smelled its urine. After satisfying himself that his own men had stopped firing, Foss stood and trotted doubled-over toward the largest truck, while trying to keep the big Chrysler — where Herve still lay squalling — between him and the recalcitrant potential robbery victims.
Foss saw a rag on the step of the big truck and tossed it at Dante. “Take this out to Herve and keep your head down. Those old buggers have lots of guns.”
For most criminals, the contents of sixteen condos in the eight duplexes they’d already looted would have been an ample haul for all nineteen members of this ad hoc gang. They should have taken what they already had and quickly skipped town.
But Foss had that kind of hubris often seen in managers who forfeit practicality because they’re so dazzled by their presumed logistical prowess, so intoxicated with their original plan. No matter how woefully inadequate that plan became when it encountered dramatically altered real-world circumstances, such managers simply were unable or unwilling to adapt.
The completely unexpected development now facing Foss, however, affected him differently than it would someone merely bound to a rigid, inadequate scheme. Somehow this barricade and these defenders represented a cosmic challenge which Foss found perversely stimulating. For the moment Foss lost sight of his preposterously optimistic objective: to rob one-hundred-twenty-four households in sixty-two duplexes — with eighteen idiots, four trucks, and no boxes — in one hour. Currently, all he wanted to do was kill some old geezers with guns who had neither run nor surrendered. They had decided to resist and dared to shoot in his direction.
At present, Foss was more intent on revenge than on robbery or escape.
He didn’t even know his two lookouts had already fled the scene. He also did not realize three of Dante’s haulers were trussed-up near the intersection of Placid and Pleasant.
Furthermore, Foss had no clue that he’d been flanked.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Wednesday at 2:21 p.m.
Boom! The fourth bomb exploded at the hay bales.
****
Barricade
When Wade’s fourth bomb exploded, all the firing stopped briefly. Everybody on the barricade line flinched. They couldn’t help it; it was like ducking under helicopter blades one knows are at least twelve feet above.
Pete got Ellie’s attention and held up one finger — one bomb remaining. She understood; after the bombs were used up and all the varied produce fired from Wade’s homemade mortar, something else was going to happen. Whatever it was would unfold in a hurry. Pete’s primary plan, to delay the thieving gang for as long as possible, had worked well to that point. But he knew the enemy would not hold to status quo.
Kelly had previously thought she heard a siren, but it faded quickly. Nobody else appeared to hear it except maybe Ashley, but she didn’t comment.
Then Diane heard something. She reached to her right and grabbed a nearby sleeve. “You hear sirens?” It wasn’t who she’d thought she’d clutched. Chet was crouched down and Isaiah had stepped back slightly.
“Huh?” Deaf Leo was the wrong person to ask.
Kelly leaned over Ashley, from Diane’s other side. “Yeah, I thought I heard something. Probably a siren.”
“But they were like… going away from us.” Ashley felt pretty certain.
Kelly wondered if the sirens were heard by either task force, or by any of the enemy.
Over at the south security post, Stanley intently watched the end of the Pete’s erosion hedges from the deck beside Alice’s condo. He needed a restroom, badly. Stanley’s medicine helped keep fluid from building up in the area around his heart but it was also a relentless diuretic.
Right then he had an important job guarding the extended right flank of their barricade line, so he couldn’t leave his post. Only one answer and Alice probably wouldn’t even notice. Pee under her deck. Sounded simple enough, but in order to keep his Garand trained on the hedges for possible infiltrators, Stanley would have to tend to his other business left-handed.
Back at the barricade, the tension simmered. In what seemed like a long time since Chico had been blasted in the face by Earl’s fouled water, nobody on the barricade had verbally engaged the enemy. Sergeant Henley’s orders. So Baldy repeated Chico’s earlier surrender demand with more threats and punctuated it with additional profanity.
At such times, one would like to come up with something as memorable as General Anthony McAuliffe’s succinct reply, “Nuts!”, but lines of such majesty surface only once in a generation.
Finally, Pete nodded and Ellie was free to reply, loudly. “Afraid not. You got this figured wrong. We ain’t moving and we ain’t
leaving. You ain’t getting nothing from these houses except some Bless George trouble. We figure to keep you hoodlums pinned down ‘til the police come and haul you off.”
Baldy peered around the back of the largest van and answered. “Ain’t no cops coming out here, old lady. They’s all messing with drills and practicing disasters. We got this all figured out. The gangs out in L.A. ain’t the only ones know how to git what they need. We just as smart as them guys.”
Which wasn’t very smart at all, Kelly was thinking. Belong to an organization that glorifies killing for no reason but to claim neighborhood territories.
This batch was nothing like those media-hyped gangs. In fact, aside from being young and male, they were a fairly broad cross-section of the usual demographics. Without looking too closely, Kelly saw blacks, Hispanics, Caucasians, and possibly others. Baldy must be an equal opportunity hoodlum recruiter. There was also the young boy — of apparently mixed blood — who’d been shinnying under garage doors previously, but had huddled in the back of the fourteen-foot van since Pete’s initial warning shots.
****
Opposing Force
When the fourth bomb had exploded in the distance, all the gangsters stopped right where they were and everyone hunkered down.
Foss conferred with H4, driver of the big truck, while Herve limped back from behind the Chrysler, still frantically wiping his face. Nobody knew why he was limping, but maybe everybody does that after being blasted in the face with Earl’s pungent urine.
Foss’s original scheme, which even he finally realized had been absurdly unrealistic with the personnel and resources at his disposal, had been to be loaded and headed toward Cumberland Parkway slightly over one hour after they rolled into that opulent-looking Community.