Friendly Fire

by John Gilstrap

  When they arrived at the heavy door, Jonathan opened it a little wider, and dared a peek. “We’ve got two more shooters at the bottom of the steps. They’re waiting for us.”

  * * *

  Warren realized that his options had boiled down to one. “Sergeant Tobin,” he said, “I want everyone out of here.”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “Out,” Warren said. “Cut the prisoners loose, and get everybody else outside to safety. Go out through the sally port.”

  When Tobin didn’t respond in half a second, Warren announced his decision to everyone else. “Everybody out! Right now! I want this station cleared of all personnel, cops and civilians alike.” It was the smart play, perhaps the only one. Bad guys taking over the police station was bad press no matter how you cut it. But fear of bad PR was no reason to let innocents die.

  “Sergeant Tobin here will lead the way. Take nothing with you. Just get out.” As he spoke, he spread his arms wide, as if to scoop people along. “Quickly, now. This station is under attack, and I want you all to get to safety.”

  More gunfire erupted upstairs, and then, from behind, he heard commotion on the stairs, as if people were hurrying down them.

  Warren pushed harder. “You need to move quickly,” he said. “Sergeant, I want this area cleared right by God now.”

  His stomach churned as he realized that his was the only available firearm to repel the invasion, if only for long enough to buy people time to get out.

  He turned and walked backward, facing the threat that announced itself as narrow white lights bouncing up and down on the wall opposite the stairs. They were here.

  Warren retreated farther down the hallway, closer to the sally port. He had to find cover.

  When one of the muzzle lights swung the corner at the end of the hallway, which was now an easy thirty feet away, Warren looked back over his shoulder and confirmed that the hallway behind him—his route to safety—was clear of people. Sergeant Tobin had done his job well.

  When the invaders lit Warren up with the light, he snapped off three quick shots and then hit the deck. The return fire was wild and uncoordinated, all of which inured to his benefit. At least for a few seconds. He belly-crawled backward, keeping his aim on the invaders.

  They lit him up again, and he fired three more rounds.

  * * *

  “Sounds like more than two shooters to me,” Boxers said. “Let’s bang them, too. You’ll probably bitch if I say frag ’em.”

  “Aimed shots,” Jonathan said. “We roll out and take them from here.” If they used a flashbang now, they’d give away some element of surprise. “I’ll take the one on the right, you have the left. Are you ready?”

  “Born ready.”

  “Two, one . . .” There was no need to count the rest of the way. Boxers reached over Jonathan’s head and pulled the door wide open. Jonathan rolled into the opening, M27 to his shoulder, and nailed his man with a three-round burst to his head. The guy collapsed. Somehow Boxers’ man dropped even faster.

  In an operation like this, there was no deadlier, less defendable space than a stairway. In a war zone, where everyone who wasn’t on your team was on the other team, you tossed a couple of fragmentation grenades to clear the way, and then you streamed in with guns for mop-up. Here, they couldn’t do that because of the number of good guys presumably mixed in with the bad.

  That meant crossing a space where everyone knew you had to go.

  Three more shots—they sounded like pistol fire—resulted in another extended fusillade of rifle fire.

  Jonathan led the way down the stairwell, pausing five steps from the bottom. The outgoing gunfire came from very close by.

  “Boss, if we step out there, we’re going to get ourselves caught in the crossfire.”

  * * *

  Spike heard the suppressed bursts of gunfire from the top of the stairs, and when he turned, he saw his men down. This spot had become untenable.

  “Give me covering fire,” he said. “We need to disburse. We’ve got shooters behind us.”

  * * *

  Jonathan heard the man’s commands, and he knew what he needed to do. If he could take the good guys out of the fight, that would leave only bad guys to worry about.

  “FBI!” he shouted. “Put your weapons down or I will—” His last words were lost in the eruption of covering fire down below. His enemy was moving. That meant they weren’t paying close attention. At least that was his story and he was sticking to it.

  “I don’t think that scared ’em, Scorpion,” Boxers said, his smile evident in his voice. “How do you want to go? Just fast and hard?”

  There weren’t a lot of options. Until Jonathan realized that he was missing the obvious. Three steps ahead, and six feet up, an exit light glowed in the darkness. He shot it, and the vision through his NVGs improved immediately.

  “Nice one,” Big Guy said. “We restack the deck.”

  “I don’t think surprise is an element anymore.” Jonathan reached into his vest pouch again. “Flashbang away.” As before, he tossed it around the corner without looking.

  * * *

  “Did he just say FBI?” Warren asked the air around him. That was what Ray Boyd had told him, wasn’t it? Don’t shoot the FBI.

  Warren nearly left his skin as a brilliant white light and a deafening explosion rattled the world and loosened ceiling tiles. He wasn’t expecting the blast, but he recognized it as a flashbang, and he said a silent prayer that his hearing would return to normal one day. It was the distraction he needed. Keeping low, he rose to his feet and started hauling ass toward the sally port. Down to the end of the hall, a sharp right turn, and then he’d be out.

  He didn’t know what this FBI team was all about, but if there was a gun battle, he didn’t have nearly the firepower he’d need to survive it. The only option was to get the hell out.

  “Help us!” someone shouted from the darkness. It was a female voice, and it sounded familiar to him.

  “Who is that?” he said, sliding to a halt. He dropped back down to one knee and pressed himself against the wall.

  “Chief?” the voice asked. “It’s Dr. Adams. Wendy Adams.”

  “Help us!” yelled another voice. Male.

  “Where are you?”

  “In here,” they said together.

  “I’m tied to a bed. I can’t move.”

  * * *

  Jonathan lifted his NVGs out of the way as he again shot left-handed to kill the banks of emergency lights and exit signs. A blind enemy was a helpless one.

  After darkness fell, the muzzle lights all went out. Nobody wanted to be a target.

  “FBI!” Jonathan yelled again. “We can see you, but you cannot see us. Put your weapons down, or we will shoot you just as dead as we’ve already shot so many of your friends. You cannot win!”

  As he and Boxers stepped away from the opening of the stairs into wideness of the hallway, they paused and took inventory. Other than the two corpses that they had created, there appeared to be only one additional body in the hallway. It looked like a friendly.

  “We’re not really cutting these assholes a break, are we?” Boxers whispered.

  “The rules are the rules,” Jonathan said. “If they surrender, they live. But they’ve received their last warning.”

  When people lose the advantage of sight, their hearing becomes more acute, and while the flashbang ruined that for everyone for the foreseeable future, Jonathan had no intention of giving them a target by shouting another warning. He stood still as he scanned for targets, not wanting to risk them sensing his movement and firing a lucky shot.

  “I see one,” Boxers whispered. “Twenty feet on the right. His breech is still hot.”

  “Take him and move.”

  Boxers’ 417 popped, and then he and Big Guy advanced ten feet and went to a knee. Suppressors were not the silencers of movie fame. In a closed space like this, it reduced a rifle report to the sound of a pistol shot, but it was sti
ll loud, and it reduced the muzzle flash to nearly nothing. A bad guy down on the left ducked back into the hallway to return fire, and Jonathan killed him before he could fire a shot.

  The secret to victory was to confuse your opponents and then make them pay with their lives.

  “How many were there, total?” Boxers whispered.

  “I have no idea.”

  “Do you think that was the last one?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I.”

  “Time to move,” Jonathan whispered.

  * * *

  “Good God, what did they do to you?” Warren asked. The world inside this room had returned to absolute darkness, save for the dim rectangle of light cast by the emergency lighting. He didn’t dare use his phone for illumination again.

  “He was unruly,” Wendy whispered.

  Warren pushed the heavy door closed. Now the only illumination came from the window in the door.

  Ethan rattled his bonds again. “Get me out of here. Please get me out of here.”

  “Shh!” Warren hissed.

  “I don’t want to die here,” Ethan whined. “Not here and not alone.”

  Warren’s shoulders sagged. “You’re not going to die alone, Ethan,” he said. “I’m not going to leave you. I don’t suppose you have the key by chance, do you, Dr. Adams?”

  “We wouldn’t be here if I did.”

  Outside another volley of gunfire reverberated through the hallway.

  “Oh, God,” Ethan said. “Oh, God, oh, God.”

  Somewhere beyond the walls of this kill zone, Warren heard the distant sound of approaching sirens.

  “Reinforcements?” Wendy asked.

  “It won’t matter,” Warren said. “With our doctrine, it will take ten minutes minimum to get set with a SWAT raid in here. Longer, probably, because they’re already deployed to the mall.”

  “We don’t have ten minutes, do we?” Wendy asked. Her voice cracked at the words.

  “We’re not entirely alone,” Warren said. “I think there’s a team from the FBI here as well. That’s who the attackers are exchanging fire with.”

  “Unlock me!” Ethan insisted.

  “I can’t!” Warren hissed. “And be quiet!”

  * * *

  Spike followed the right-hand wall in the darkness until he found the turn in the hallway and swung it. At least now he had some measure of cover from the FBI team. Who the hell called the FBI? How were they here so soon? Not that it mattered.

  He was finished with this shit. Whoever and however, this counterassault team was damned good. When he did the math in his head, he didn’t even know if he had any team members left. With the sound of sirens blooming in the distance, he was out of options. Without a doubt, the people who had fled were gathered outside. Even if they were not lying in wait, they now posed a near-insurmountable problem. The original plan had called for them to breeze through, kill as many as they could, and then escape. The total time on site was to be less than six minutes.

  Now this. At least the emergency lights were still working on this leg of the hallway. That gave him something.

  The window of opportunity for any chance at survival was closing quickly. He needed to get the hell out, or make a stand. Either way, he figured he was going to die.

  Better to die fighting than die hiding. If he could find one of the holding cells, he could take refuge in there and then kill whoever opened the door, however long that took. It wasn’t much, but in this narrow space, the option of moving and shooting made no sense at all—especially since his adversaries had night vision and could easily make this as dark as the other hall.

  Someone said, “Get me out of here! Please get me out of here!” And it was very close, coming from behind a closed door on the left. There were more voices, too. Over the course of just a few seconds, he thought he picked up the sounds of two males and a female. Much of it was sotto voce and therefore undiscernible, but it gave him direction. He heard the stress, he could smell the fear.

  And then one word rose above all the others. Someone mentioned the name Ethan.

  So the mission wouldn’t be a complete waste after all.

  * * *

  Warren heard movement beyond the door, and he placed his left hand on Ethan’s shackled ankle in hopes of communicating the need for total silence. In his right, he kept his Glock tucked in close to his body, facing the window.

  “Wendy, get on the floor.”

  “What’s—”

  “Get on the floor!”

  Wendy stooped to a squat, and then lay down on the tile.

  “What about me?” Ethan said.

  “They’ve got to go through me first,” Warren said.

  The movement had stopped. In Warren’s mind, someone was staging himself on the other side of the door, waiting for—

  The door burst open, and Warren was blinded by an impossibly bright light that hit him straight in the face. He dove for the light, swatting it to the side at the same instant that rifle muzzle to which it was attached fired a shot into the ceiling. Warren fired, too, but apparently to no effect. As the chief focused on not letting the muzzle come back around, the attacker had a crushing grip on Warren’s gun hand. Warren pulled the trigger again, but nothing happened. The struggle must have unseated the pistol’s slide just enough to take the bullet out of battery.

  Warren let go of his pistol. If it didn’t fire once, it wasn’t going to fire now, and he wanted both hands for his struggle with the rifle. He threw an elbow at the attacker’s face, but he knew that he didn’t land solidly.

  Stars erupted behind Warren’s eyes as the attacker pistol-whipped him with his own pistol. He reeled, and in that instant, he knew that he’d lost the fight.

  * * *

  Jonathan jumped at the sound of the gunshots, and then he realized someone was in a lot of trouble. There’s a sound to hand-to-hand combat that is unlike any other, driven by grunts and growls and shouts that sounded much like any animals fighting to the death.

  Those were precisely the sounds Jonathan heard pouring from the room down the hall, and he quickened his pace. Anticipating the closest of quarters, he let his M27 fall against its sling and he drew his 1911.

  The temptation was to run in, but it was always a mistake to overcommit. Instead, he slowed to a brisk walk, and then pulled to a stop just outside the open door. He peeked around the corner in time to see a man in body armor deliver a stunning punch to a man in a suit.

  The bigger man stood and shouldered his M4.

  Jonathan reached out one-handed and shot a .45 caliber bullet at point-blank range into the attacker’s ear.

  It was over.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Jonathan reholstered his Colt. “Is everybody okay?” he asked. He lifted his NVGs out of the way, then reached into a pocket on his thigh and withdrew a visible-light light stick. He tore open the packet, cracked the stick and shook it. The green light made everyone look ill, but at least they could see.

  He stooped to see if the guy in the suit was conscious, and he was. Blood streamed from a cut over his eye, but it didn’t look like a big deal. “Thanks,” the guy said, and he extended his hand.

  He might have just been looking for a handshake, but Jonathan decided to help him up instead.

  “FBI?” the man said.

  Jonathan said nothing.

  “Warren Michaels. I’m chief of police here. Or I was, anyway. How bad is the carnage upstairs?”

  “It’s pretty bad,” Jonathan said. “You lost a few, but the bad guys are all dead.”

  “How did you know?” Warren said. “I mean, you called ahead.”

  “Holy shit!” Ethan shouted. “It’s him! It’s you! Holy shit!” Jonathan knew without looking that Boxers had entered the room.

  Big Guy helped a lady to her feet.

  “Wendy, these are the guys who rescued me! Ask them. They know what happened.”

  Jonathan smiled. “Hello, Ethan. It’s been a long time
.”

  “See?” Ethan said. “He knows!”

  The woman named Wendy stared, her mouth open a little. It was the kind of expression that Jonathan imagined people would have if they met an alien.

  “Is that true?” Warren asked.

  “I’m afraid it is, Chief,” Jonathan said. “Your John Doe in the morgue is really named James Stepahin, and I can’t think of anyone who more deserves to be on a slab.”

  The chief shifted his gaze between Jonathan and Boxers. He wasn’t entirely buying what they were selling. “What are your names?”

  “That one’s Scorpion, and the other one is Big Guy,” Ethan said. “Just like I’ve told you a thousand times.”

  “Those aren’t names,” Warren said.

  “They’ll do for tonight, Chief.”

  “You’re not really FBI, are you?”

  “Sure we are,” Jonathan said. He pointed to the three gold letters embroidered onto the shoulder of his vest, near his knife. “It says so right there. Want me to show you a badge?”

  Warren glared, not saying a word.

  “Tell you what,” Jonathan said. “I need to get going, and you have some very long days ahead of you.” He extended his hand and Warren shook it. “Chief, I am terribly sorry for your loss.”

  “You’re under arrest,” Warren said.

  “No, I’m not. Trust me, Chief. I’m really not. Tomorrow, if you get a chance, call Irene Rivers at the FBI.”

  “The director?”

  “Yes, sir. She’ll take the call, or if not, she’ll find a way to contact you. She’ll tell you everything you have a need to know. Sorry to be so cryptic. As for my old friend Ethan there, cut him a break, will you?”

  Warren glanced over to the shackled young man. “We’ll do our best.”

  “Now, I do need a favor from you,” Jonathan said.

  Warren arched an eyebrow.

  “I need you to vouch for us as we leave,” Jonathan said.

  “That’s kind of a bold step, don’t you think?” Warren said. “Especially after you refused to be arrested? I’m not sure that’s ever happened before. And I’m definitely not sure that I’m going along with it.”