Dead Lines [911]

by Grace Hamilton

  Bending at the waist, he then leaned over the top and grabbed hold of several of the diamond-shaped links with his right hand. He grabbed the fence rail with his left and pushed, sort of cartwheeling over the top. As he came down, he pushed off with his left hand and pivoted around his right hand’s grip. Textbook.

  The impact of the ground on the soles of his boots sent a shudder up through his feet and into his body. Momentum almost pushed him backwards to land on his ass, but he maintained his grip on the fence and remained standing.

  The fence vibrated, undulating loudly in protest under the disturbance. He quickly turned and jogged over to the building, leaning his pack up against the wall and listening to see if he’d alerted the hillbilly on the roof. He loosened the straps on the submachine gun and quietly clicked the safety selector switch to single shot.

  He waited for long moments, forcing his breathing back under control. To his right sat the green, industrial-sized dumpster he’d sussed out earlier. He tilted his head, listening for the telltale sounds of boots on the roof. Mr. Armalite was a big lunk, so there was no way that good ole boy was cat-footing it around up there. He heard nothing.

  Parker looked at the dumpster and sighed. He wasn’t a little guy himself, and it’d been more than a few years since he’d run the obstacle course at the academy. He wasn’t bristling with confidence that he could clamber up onto the dumpster and then onto the roof quietly enough that he wouldn’t alert the guard.

  He unslung his submachine gun from around his body and set it carefully on the dumpster lid, placing his knapsack alongside it. His flesh crawled with discomfort at being forced to take his hands off of his primary weapon in a situation like this, but there was nothing for it.

  He placed both hands on the edge of the dumpster and pushed, pressing himself up. Folding his body at the waist, he laid his torso carefully across the lid and reached out with his right hand to grasp the bin along the edge at the rear.

  He gently lifted his leg up and got a knee over the edge. He smelled cigarette smoke and froze. Caught in an awkward and strained position, he went still. In the next moment, he heard the sound of a heavy step on the roof.

  He had to make a decision.

  He pushed down with his knee and finished climbing onto the dumpster, wincing at the slight vibration rattle in the hollow metal structure as he moved. Scooping up the submachine gun and his knapsack, he rolled at the hip until he rested with his back against the wall. If the guy looked down, he was done for. He was nothing without the survival gear in his pack. Leaving it behind wasn’t an option.

  Grasping the submachine gun tightly in both hands, Parker held it ready, the blunt muzzle of the sound suppressor oriented towards the edge of the roof. The smell of smoke increased and the boot steps grew louder. The guard was directly above him.

  Parker stopped breathing.

  This was a life or death gambit. He had to make his kills quietly and instantly. If he didn’t, reinforcements would swarm him and he was doomed. Any cultist he didn’t kill on his way in was another gun he faced on the way back out.

  “Hey, dipshit,” Parker said.

  “What the fuck?” the guy sputtered.

  But he didn’t sound confused or flustered; he sounded curious. Which one of the congregation was outside and calling him names? He leaned out slightly over the edge of the roof and scanned the ground.

  He saw Parker in the next moment and his eyes grew big with shock. He tried to fumble with his Armalite, but he’d been too relaxed a moment ago and not mentally prepared to spring into action.

  Parker lined him up like he was shooting pool and stroked the trigger on the submachine gun. The weapon cycled with a slight buck in his grip, and oily brass cartridges tumbled out and struck the lid of the dumpster bin at his feet.

  The 9mm rounds struck the guy in a sloppy triangle on either side of his nose. The mist of a blood halo appeared behind his head and dark red rivulets of blood poured from the wounds, turning his face into a scarlet mask. The sentry tumbled forward off the roof, managed a half-turn as he fell, and hit the ground hard.

  Parker covered him with the sub gun all the way down, using an abundance of caution, but the kill had been clean and instantaneous. Adrenaline coursed through his body, and with it the familiar, intoxicating fear endorphins; he’d felt hunted and trapped, but now he knew he was utterly capable of taking the fight to the enemy.

  He dropped to the ground and stripped the man of his Armalite before dumping his body into the dumpster. During his shakedown of the corpse, he’d found a heavy ring of keys bulky enough to do a school janitor proud. He slipped these keys into his back pocket and climbed back onto the dumpster before pulling himself onto the roof.

  He crouched for a moment and scanned the area. It was a tar and gravel roof, rough on the skin of his knee through his jeans where he knelt. There was a forest of satellite dishes on the roof, ranging in size from a microwave to a washing machine, and one with a concave dish as big as a Mini-Cooper.

  Interspersed among the dishes were several UHF and old-fashioned radio antennas sticking up among the geo-communications equipment like Charlie Brown Christmas trees. A large HVAC unit sat silent towards the front of the building, next to a small maintenance shack that presumably served as an access point to the interior of the building.

  Parker frowned. There was nothing wrong with this equipment. These things didn’t lose value because the station went out of business, he realized. There were potentially tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of dollars’ worth of equipment up here. There was no way corporate bean counters would have overlooked these things.

  Like a taunt, even from up here on the roof, the sound of the working generator was an easily discernible humming. More questions, he thought, still no answers.

  Rising into a crouch, he began weaving his way through the tangle of electrical cords and equipment. Closer up towards the front, he picked out the roof sentry’s position, this consisting of a folding auditorium chair and three flattened sandbags set up in a rifle rest. There was a thermos, too, and dozens of ground-out cigarette butts.

  He knew the kid was down there sitting without a clue. Maybe, in a little bit, he’d get curious about where his buddy Uncle Armalite was, but the last thing he’d ever expect was to be shot from the top of his own building.

  Parker didn’t want to do it, either. His gut felt queasy and tight at the thought, but he forced himself to problem-solve. He imagined himself finding Ava, then running for it as cult members tried stopping them. Did he think for even a second that the kid would let them go? He imagined the annoying little punk cutting loose with that shotgun. Like a full circle, he was back to facing a man with a shotgun.

  He sighed. Why was he even debating this anymore? He’d crossed his own personal Rubicon on this matter somewhere back in the night without fully recognizing it. He wasn’t backing down, he wasn’t giving up, and he wasn’t going to fail another girl the way he’d failed his own daughter. Failed her all those years ago in the shadows of this very building, down the very same street, at the Stapleton Mall.

  And yeah, he admitted to himself, now that he knew about them, he wondered how much the Church of Humanity might have had to do with that. They, apparently, were in the girl-stealing business. So he walked around the edge of the doorway leading down into the building, and approached the edge of the roof.

  The kid stood over by the fence. His back was to the building, shotgun leaning across the lawn chair behind him. A long stream of urine splashed the brambles and formed a patch of mud between his feet.

  Parker shot him, and then entered the building.

  23

  Parker crept down the stairs, submachine gun at the ready.

  He wasn’t going to race blindly towards his death, but he didn’t think trying to ghost past the cultists inside like a ninja was going to work. He’d be methodical, using the sound suppressor on the SMG to his advantage as much as possible, but most of all he intended to uti
lize the kinetic dynamics of a SWAT entry—speed, surprise, violence of action—to carry him through.

  He grinned to himself as the adrenaline coursed through his veins in chill jolts like electricity. He felt zero urge for an Ativan or a drink right now. His life currently had the one thing he’d gone so long without: purpose.

  Coming out of the stairs, he found himself in a long quiet hallway. He paused for a moment, getting his bearings. This sort of half-assed adventure was anathema to high-level hostage rescues, he understood. He didn’t know how many oppositional figures he faced, or fully what their armament was. He didn’t have the precise location of his target or what either Ava’s current medical condition or psychological frame of mind was.

  It was all a little too Luke Skywalker sneaking into the Death Star to rescue Princess Leia, to be anything remotely like a good plan. Despite knowing this, though, he felt an almost barbaric grin stretch across his face. He wasn’t enjoying himself, exactly; this was an intensely serious and dangerous situation. A young woman’s life hung in the balance, and people were going to die. Hell, maybe him. But last night’s long, hellish walk had been Phoenix-like for him; he was not the same man who’d answered that 911 call before quitting time yesterday. That man had been broken, defeated and beaten down by grief and loss and impotent rage. The man standing, weapon in hand, was a warrior king plunging straight into the teeth of death. He acted; he was no longer acted upon.

  No matter the outcome, he’d never felt more alive, more hopeful for the future, than he did right now.

  The door at the end of the hallway opened and Parker shifted towards it, bringing his weapon up. A man in mechanic’s coveralls and clunky Tanner boots walked through. He was immediately followed by two other men.

  The first cultist—hair up in one of those man buns Parker hated, and sporting a Duck Dynasty beard and neck tattoos—carried one of the thousands of Chinese-made knock-offs of the old Soviet AKM over his shoulder, and he froze mid-step as he caught sight of Parker.

  “Dr. Marr wants us on alert in case that black boy comes back,” Gruber was saying as he came through the door. Behind him, a pimply, Harry Potter looking kid followed, looking about as smart as a shovel and also carrying a Chinese AKM.

  "What the hell?" Gruber demanded as he walked into the back of the first man, who was busy trying to bring his assault rifle off his shoulder and into his hands.

  Parker dropped to one knee and leaned back in the stairwell doorway, sweeping the barrel of his AKS up and triggering a blast. The unmistakable sounds of weapons firing on full automatic assaulted Parker’s ears in the confined space. Shell casings clattered onto the worn linoleum floor, mixing with the sound of heavy, Chinese-made actions cycling back and forth. He felt the concussion of heavy slugs fill the space where his body had been only moments before.

  Targeting down the office hall, Parker unloaded his weapon in instinctive, but disciplined bursts. He started low and let the recoil shuttering in his grip lift the muzzle as he backed through a doorway. He spun and dropped to the ground. From his belly, he thrust the barrel around the doorjamb and arced the weapon back and forth as he laid down angry suppressive blasts.

  Bullets from the return fire smacked into the plasterboard of the walls above and around him. He heard a second and then a third weapon open up. Gruber was shouting angrily and the other two responded with something inarticulate over the noise. Parker scrambled backward and jammed the extended shoulder stock of the weapon into his shoulder.

  There was silence for a long moment. Parker ticked down through possible strategies and options. The paramount thing was getting momentum into his possession and keeping it until the enemy was dead. He maneuvered the barrel of his weapon through the doorway and triggered an exploratory burst.

  An answering salvo tore into the wooden doorframe and ripped into the floor directly in front of him. Parker ducked back in an exaggerated surprise reflex. He felt splinters coming off of the wooden support flooring beneath the cheap, tack-on linoleum, stinging his chin.

  One of the men had moved forward and taken up position in the doorway across the hall from the stairwell where Parker was pinned down. From this position, the man controlled the entire sweep of the short hallway. Parker couldn’t advance, and if he was driven back up onto the roof, he’d never reenter.

  Frustrated, Parker triggered a long, stuttering burst of gunfire. His rounds punched like fastballs through the flimsy interior door of the office directly across from him. He rolled up onto his side, extended his arms, and emptied his magazine, stitching out an uneven line of lead to keep the cultists from charging his position.

  Things are not going well, he thought, again.

  Parker was acutely aware of himself in the moment. He smelled his sweat, felt the sting of the splinters where they’d driven into his skin. His eyes stung from the dust created by building materials being pulverized. His weapon smelled like spent ammunition and hot machine oil. Hot gas from the discharging weapon clung in his nose.

  He had to get out of this position or die. As he changed magazines, the men opened fire again and rounds struck the wall next to his doorway. He felt adrenaline slip into his bloodstream like nitrous into the engine of a race car. He scrambled forward, holding the submachine gun in one hand and thrusting it out the stairwell door.

  He worked the trigger, and the weapon bucked and jumped in his grip. He came up to one knee and surged forward like a sprinter off the blocks, sprinting out through the door behind his cover fire. His rounds struck in hammer blows around the door of the forward most cultist. He caught motion down at the far end of the hall and pivoted at the waist. His rounds struck the pimply-faced kid and tore out his throat. The kid’s eyes went wide in shock and he fired a futile burst into the floor at his feet. Blood splashed the bullet-pocked wall behind him and he crumpled inward on himself.

  The hot escaping gases from the submachine gun warmed Parker’s wrists as he flung himself forward, still firing as he made his dash. The bolt on his weapon snapped open and shut, open and shut, as he burned through his rounds. Two steps from the dubious safety of the room across the hall, the submachine gun’s magazine ran dry and the bolt locked open.

  He flung the empty weapon from him and finished his dive as Gruber stepped out of a doorway and snap-aimed at him. Parker’s shoulder struck the door, already chewed up from his 9mm rounds, the flimsy construction offering little resistance to his heavy frame, and he went through, into the room.

  Parker went down, carried forward by his momentum, and landed on the shoulder he’d offered up as a battering ram. Coming down, he somersaulted over it in a haphazard tuck-and-roll to come up on one knee, and from this position he drew his Glock. He leveled it at the wall separating his position from the gunman with the stupid-ass man bun.

  The 135 Grain Federal Premium JHP .40 caliber rounds erupted from the handgun at a velocity of 360 meters a second. He walked a line of slugs across the wall at waist height. The bullets tore through plywood, drywall, and insulation with ease, smashing out the far side in deadly needles of death. He heard the bearded man cry out in surprise and pain.

  Then the world changed.

  From beneath him, the building shook in a seismic buckle and a massive explosion ripped through the building. The intensity of the sound deafened him and he staggered. He heard the cracking and buckling of building materials around him as the power went out. He fell to the ground, and the floor opened up beneath him like a crack in the earth.

  24

  There was smoke, and there was fire.

  His head swam. What the hell? he had time to think, and then pieces of the ceiling fell and hot smoke poured in. He shrugged out of his knapsack and opened it quickly. His hand found the little survivalist SBA mask and O2 canister, and he quickly secured them in place. His eyes burned.

  The old TV station had become a burning kill-box in the flash of an instant. He was off-balance, confused and disorientated. The ceiling had warped and buckled in pl
aces—not enough to break down the roof and let in daylight, but enough to separate out the false ceiling and create a rubble-strewn jungle gym of a chamber. Flames licked up through the chasm from the basement where, presumably, the explosion had originated.

  He heard a young woman’s voice screaming.

  On instinct, he answered it, shouting, “Ava!” but the words were muffled by the clear, pliable plastic of his SBA mask. But the canister had maybe eight minutes of air and was designed to help someone escape from a burning building, not perform a search and rescue mission.

  He sucked in some oxygen and then removed the mask; without thinking, operating on pure instinct, he called out into the fire. “Ava! Ava, is that you?”

  An AKM opened up and steel-jacketed rounds buzz-sawed through the shattered walls and cracked above his head. He took a calculated risk and rolled back over one shoulder, came up, and, using one hand to make three points of contact with the floor, crab-scuttled to the wall.

  He froze there, tense, certain a hail of bullets would cut him down. His eyes stung, but his lungs were fine thanks to the SBA—for now. He needed to take Gruber down as quickly as possible, before his finite supply of oxygen ran dry. But ‘quick’ wasn’t the way blind-fighting worked. It was a game of nerves where the other senses of hearing and intuition struggled to make up for the lack of sight. Rushing in the dark caused noise, and noise brought certain death with it.

  Parker remained motionless in the now oppressive, furnace-like atmosphere. The female voice no longer screamed, no longer made any sound at all. He strained, looking for even the slightest hint of motion, or any sound above the trip-hammer thumping of his own heart in his ears. His eyes adjusted slowly, until forms began taking shape from the inky black.

  The floor lay littered with debris and was as uneven as a lava field from the wreckage of the collapsed ceiling. The ground was precarious, with jutting timbers and piles of shattered masonry and timber. Artifacts of the building’s former use were scattered like pieces of broken landscape among the rubble; overturned desks, bits of computer consoles, busted chairs, and various other bric-a-brac. It was a treacherous hunting ground.