The van whipped around the Fusion on the driver’s side looking like it would pass them and roar through the intersection, but it skidded to an immediate stop right beside them.
“What the hell?” sputtered the driver.
The side door of the van slid open. Two men and two women were inside, aiming semi-auto rifles.
They opened fire, shattering all of the windows on the driver’s side. The driver himself took the first round through his forehead, splattering brains on his passenger beside him. Then several more rounds slammed into him and into the detective in the back seat as well. They didn’t try to flee – they just jerked under the impacts and died where they sat.
The detective in the passenger’s seat was hit twice but didn’t know it with the adrenaline, and he was big enough and the 5.56 mm rounds were light enough that they didn’t stop him from opening his door and tumbling out on the street.
The dead driver’s foot came off the brake, and the Fusion began the drift forward even as the firing continued and the roof erupted in bullet holes.
The passenger rolled out onto the asphalt and managed to draw his Beretta even as the noise of the firing threatened to overwhelm him. He got to his feet just as the trunk of the drifting Ford passed by him, leaving him exposed in the street.
He fired a shot into the van – it hit one of the women in the stomach and she collapsed, groaning. The other three shooters still had about a half dozen rounds in their mags and they proceeded to dump them into the staggering detective. He shuddered and fell back into the gutter. The unharmed woman aimed carefully and shot off the top of his head as he lay there. Then she dropped her magazine and pulled out a fresh one.
“What are you waiting for?” she shouted to the van driver. “Go!”
One of the men pulled the sliding door shut as the van took off west on 9th.
One of the PSF officers grabbed the elderly woman at the front of the Starbucks order line and pushed her away.
“What the hell!” the woman shouted. There were a half dozen civilians inside the store, and they all looked over – all except for one man in the corner with his face buried in the New York Times.
“You best shut the fuck up,” screamed the officer. Kessler ignored the unpleasantness and stepped up to the barista.
“My usual,” she said. The barista turned to his buddy.
“The usual,” he said. The buddy nodded. Extra loogie it is.
At 7:15, Kelly Turnbull opened the door of the bathroom and stepped out with his black Remington 870 pump action. One of the PSF men was about ten feet away. Turnbull lifted it by its pistol grip, planted the stock in his shoulder and fired a shell full of double aught buckshot straight at the blue’s face.
His face was erased, with most of it splattering one of his buddies, some of it catching the old woman, who shrieked and ran. Turnbull jacked out the empty shell and pumped a fresh one into the chamber.
The other security man raised his AK, but Turnbull was quicker, firing straight into his chest. The Kevlar plate in his body armor took the brunt of it, but he still flew backwards and crashed into the pastry case, scattering shards of glass among the indifferent scones and rock-hard muffins that Starbucks now sold.
The splattered officer was raising his rifle next to Kessler when there was a roar and his face blew out forward, and he went down what-was-left-of-his-face first. Behind him, Larry Langer stood unsmiling with smoke curling from the barrel of his .357 magnum Colt Python. Around him, the civilians were diving for cover under the tables.
Turnbull stepped forward and pumped the shotgun, then fired again into the PSF officer entangled in the pastry case. The officer stopped moving. Turnbull pumped the 870 again.
“Nope,” said Langer, putting the .357 to Kessler’s temple as she struggled to take out her Beretta. She froze, quivering.
“You’re Kessler, right?” he said.
“Uh no,” Kessler said.
“Then why you wearing her uniform?” Langer asked. Kessler looked down and realized her name was on the breast of her black uniform.
“Don’t hurt me,” she said.
“You killed my family,” Langer said, the anger underlying his words becoming more obvious.
“No, not me,” she said. “It wasn’t me.”
Langer pulled back the hammer.
“We need to move,” Turnbull said, covering the door with his weapon. The civilians had recovered their senses and were scrambling to escape. The baristas were gone.
“You can’t just shoot a woman in cold blood,” Kessler said, desperate.
“Yeah,” said Langer. “But I can if I – what do they call that? – misgender you.”
“I –” Kessler began, but Langer pulled the trigger.
The cruisers’ windshields in the parking lot of the PSF station were shattering one after another. Bullets ripped into the sheet metal, singly or stitching across panels. The shotgun pellets would punch out gaping, jagged holes in the steel, especially as the insurgents moved in closer.
The noise from over four dozen weapons all firing was overpowering.
There were maybe a half-dozen officers lying around their vehicles, with only one or two still stirring. Another five or six were pinned down behind their cars, intermittently returning fire – less aim and squeeze than spray and pray.
The PSF station was a squat, one story brick structure with only a few windows, and those were high on the front face of the building near the roof line. What glass there was the insurgents rapidly blew out.
Every few moments, a PSF officer would appear in the front doorway to fire a random AK burst out toward the attackers. The insurgents caught onto the pattern pretty quickly, and two with scoped hunting rifles patiently awaited his next appearance like they were waiting for an eight-point buck. The next time the shooter swung out to blaze away, he caught one .270 and one .308 round and was dead before he hit the floor behind him. The PSF officers inside stopped trying to shoot at the guerrillas out the front door.
The insurgents had been waiting for the quick reaction force to come rushing outside. The 911 calls reporting the assassinations were supposed to begin coming in at about 7:15 or so that morning. But they didn’t. The guerrillas had moved into position in, on, and around the nearby buildings, waiting for the PSF officers to spill out to their vehicles and hurry to the various shooting sites, but five minutes later there was still nothing.
Banks was in overall command at the station. He was positioned with his team next to a hardware store with a good view of the front of the PSF station, and his folks were deployed around the perimeter of the building.
There had been no sentries outside when they first arrived, which boggled his military mind. That made it simple for dozens of the insurgents to slowly move into position, surrounding the station, and to stand waiting for the exodus of the quick reaction force. But the force simply did not appear when expected
“Why aren’t they coming out? Do you think they see us?” Banks said to a brown-haired woman with an AR15. Her name was Mary. She had moved into his house a few days before; they had known each other since high school but really connected lying on the ground waiting to pump bullets into passing blues.
“Maybe no one called 911,” Mary suggested, not taking her aim from the front door.
“I heard the shots from the Starbucks,” Banks said. The coffee shop was a few blocks west. He held his M14, barrel down, waiting. Nothing.
“I don’t think anyone called it in,” Mary replied firmly.
“I suppose that’s good. The people won’t help them. Means we have their hearts and minds, I guess,” Banks said. On the hardware store’s wall next to them were three Carl Hyatt posters that had evaded being torn down the way many of the others had been.
“Well, what do we do?” Mary asked. “They need to come outside or the plan won’t work.”
“Hold on.” Bank leaned his rifle against the wall and pulled out a cheap Motorola cell phone he had taken off one
of the dead PVs just in case he needed a burner. The battery was out of it, of course – no sense in walking around with something that would broadcast his location – so he had to reinsert the white power cell into the back of the device to turn it on.
“Still nothing,” Mary marveled as they watched. The other insurgents were getting restless. Banks punched 9-1-1 into the phone and put it to his ear.
He waited. And waited. His troops looked at him, puzzled.
“You’re kidding,” Mary said.
“Hold on,” Banks said, gesturing and letting it ring.
Several moments later, he spoke.
“Yeah, hi, hey, some PSF guys just got shot at the Jasper Starbucks on Main,” he said, then paused, listening.
“Okay, one was female.” Another pause.
“Look, I don’t know how she identified. Some PSF officers got shot and I think one is a woman.” Pause.
“I don’t know what their gender identity is. They’re bleeding out because they got shot and they’re at the Starbucks and someone better come!” He paused again.
“Me? I identify as anonymous.” Banks hung up.
“Are they coming?” asked Mary.
“I don’t even know,” Banks said, taking up his rifle again.
It was a full three minutes before the quick reaction force of PSF officers began pouring out the front door of the building and heading to the parking lot, most still adjusting their body armor. Banks did not give the signal immediately – actually, there was no signal since the ambush was to be initiated by his rifle fire.
When about a dozen PSF officers were outside and the flow slackened, Banks took aim at one male who was fiddling with his helmet and put a round into his upper torso above his vest – not that the vest itself (as opposed to the trauma plate in front that covered most of his chest) was going to stop a .308 round. The officer was violently thrown onto the hood of a cruiser, and then slid off onto the parking lot asphalt. By the time he hit the ground, Banks was shooting another blue, and all the fifty or so insurgents around the station had opened fire.
The guerillas’ bullets bounced off the outer brick walls, the gutters, and cracked the panes of the high row of windows. The PSF inside tried to defend themselves, but it was difficult. The police station was not a fort, and it was not designed to provide the sheriff’s deputies inside with the mutually supporting fields of fire necessary to defend the position.
Engaging from the front door was a non-starter – no one had removed the body of the PSF officer killed there and no one rushed to take his place. A couple officers tried to rush out the back door. There were no windows at all at the back, so the insurgents had moved up close. The pair of blues had been cut down by a team of insurgents with three Mossberg 12 gauge shotguns and a silver Henry .45-70 lever action repeater that sent its target flying.
There were not a lot of other options. To fire out the windows running just under the roof, the PSF had to push desks against the outer walls, and then stand with head and shoulders exposed to provide aimed fire outside at the attackers. A couple of them tried it. They each drew a swarm of carefully aimed return fire and fell back on the squad room floor, dead before they landed. That was the last of the attempts to fight from the windows.
Banks waved his force around the flank of the parking lot. The few PSF survivors fighting from behind vehicles realized they were in a crossfire. Within a few moments, most of them were dead or wounded. A couple of them tossed away their AKs and shouted that they were giving up. Insurgents rushed into the parking lot, and spirited them away as other guerrillas took up positions closer to the building.
A bulldozer, its blade low, fired up down the street when Banks signaled it. As it passed, Banks, Mary and a couple others took cover behind the blade and awkwardly moved forward toward the front of the station behind the steel’s protection. About 30’ from the front door, they stopped. From inside, there were some shots and sparks flew off the outer side of the dozer blade. Everyone returned fire into or around the front entrance, and the PSF’s return fire was not repeated.
“Hey, you in there! Come out and talk!” shouted Banks. Nothing. No movement, no response.
Turnbull and Langer rushed over to them, low and fast. Turnbull carried his Remington and had slipped on his shades and a tan ball cap. Langer had not picked up a long weapon yet.
“What’s the situation?” Turnbull asked.
“Got probably a dozen already. There’s some inside but they aren’t really engaging.”
“Any contact?”
“Not since they shot at us a minute ago.”
Turnbull nodded, and yelled.
“Hey you in there, tell your commander to come out and talk!”
Nothing.
“Hey assholes, I’m not waiting all day. Tell your CO to get out here.”
Nothing.
“Dumb shits,” Turnbull said, shaking his head.
“I got an idea,” Langer said.
“Go for it,” said Turnbull. Langer grinned.
“Okay boys,” he yelled. “Bring up the gas cans. Get it splashed on there good.”
The insurgents shrugged, confused. Banks gestured them to stay put. Turnbull smiled, then yelled again.
“You sure you don’t want to talk?”
Then a voice came from inside,
“We, we have prisoners!”
“I know,” Turnbull replied.
“You burn us, you burn them,” said the voice.
“Yeah, well you ought to be thinking hardest about the ‘burn us’ part. That should be your priority.”
“We should discuss a deal,” said the voice.
“I’m sick of yelling,” Turnbull said over the top of the blade. “You and me on the front steps.”
“How do I know you won’t shoot me?”
“If I was going to shoot you I’d have already started barbequing you. The stairs, now!”
“All right,” replied the voice after a moment.
Turnbull turned to Langer and Banks.
“If those dicks shoot me, go find some gasoline and burn them out.” Langer grinned and nodded. Turnbull stood up behind the blade, came around, and walked up the front steps.
He was greeted by a thin man in civilian clothes.
The man extended his hand. “I am Inspector Kunstler.”
Turnbull regarded the outstretched paw as if it were herpetic.
“So you’re the head motherfucker in charge?” Turnbull asked.
Kunstler seemed taken aback, but rallied. “I’m in charge.”
“You must be PBI. Sorry about all your pals.”
“What do mean?” asked Kunstler.
“You’re lucky you headed into work early. Your Junior Gestapo guys – we hit them all. Oh, and your PSF chief Kessler too. Her coffee came with extra lead.”
“That’s no loss,” Kunstler said. “So, you have a proposal?”
“No. Here’s how this happens,” Turnbull said. “You all come out without weapons and we don’t kill you all.”
“I’d like –”
“Oh, did I give you the false impression that this is a negotiation? Tell your punk pals to leave their weapons and come on out and we won’t do you.”
“We do have some of your friends inside, and that could be problematic for you if we have to keep fighting.”
“I have plenty of friends. I won’t miss a few.”
Kunstler looked him over. “No, I don’t believe you would. You aren’t from here, are you?”
“Are we sharing now? You should really be focused on convincing us not to shoot you.”
“You’re in better shape than the locals, and you carry yourself differently. Military. You’re an infiltrator, aren’t you? You’re the one behind all this terrorism.”
“Hey Sherlock, the only terrorism in Jasper is you shitheads.”
“One man’s terrorist is –”
“Don’t say it. I hate that cliché. Now, you talk an awful lot, Inspector, and I
think you’re about ten words away from me shooting you right here and now, truce or not. Are you surrendering, or do I need to get all Kingston on your asses?”
Kunstler seemed confused.
“Kingston. It’s a kind of charcoal briquette. You know, for barbequing? Oh, right, you banned grilling because of global warming. I ought to shoot you just because of that.”
“It’s global cooling. Science tells us we’re facing another ice age.”
“Enough. Are you coming out or not?”
“How will we be treated?” Kunstler asked.
“I promise not to shoot you all. That’s the deal. In or out.”
“All right. We’ll come out.”
The prisoners were zip-tied in the parking lot, about 30 of them including a couple wounded PSF officers. The insurgents searched each one, relieving them of wallets, phones, weapons, armor – everything but the clothes on their backs. They looked miserable.
Kunstler sat and glared; Turnbull ensured his restraints were good and tight. Sergeant Greely sat nearby; they found him cowering in the broom closet. Now Turnbull was focused on giving instructions to the insurgents salvaging the captured spoils. A repurposed municipal bus idled by the street, waiting.
A couple medics wheeled out a stretcher with Ted Cannon. He looked like he had gone ten rounds with the San Antonio 49ers’ offensive line.
“Wait,” Cannon said as they pushed him past where Kunstler sat zip-tied on the pavement. Kunstler looked up, contemptuous. Turnbull, giving directions not far away, noticed the death stare.
“Hey,” Cannon said. “I didn’t tell you shit. But I knew shit.” He smiled and laughed, painfully.
“Next time,” said Kunstler. Turnbull walked over and kicked him in the kidney, and Kunstler glared.
“Next time we cross paths,” Cannon said, “I’m killing you.” The medics wheeled him away.
“You are lucky I gave my word, Inspector,” Turnbull said.
“Someday you will be gone back to your racist red homeland, and I’ll be back here cleaning out this right wing filth,” Kunstler said, smiling.
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