Stand Your Ground

by William W. Johnstone

  He wished the chief was here now.

  But Raymond was alone, so he pushed the safety lever the way the chief had showed him and pulled the trigger, and this time the shotgun made a terrible racket and jumped so hard it flew right out of Raymond’s hands and landed behind the counter.

  He dived after it as more bullets tore into the communications console and sparks flew everywhere. When he tried to grab the gun again, he was clumsy and it slid away from him. Then he got his hands on it and pumped it just as a man came around the end of the corner with a gun in his hand.

  Raymond fired from the floor.

  The load of buckshot slammed into the man’s groin and abdomen and threw him backward. Raymond let out a sob of horror as he saw all the blood.

  But he stood up and kept shooting, pumping the shotgun as he swung the barrel from left to right, spraying buckshot across the shattered front of the police station.

  The other men who had gotten out of the pickup dived for cover. Raymond ducked back down. A box of shells sat on a shelf below the counter. He fumbled some of them out and started reloading.

  That’s what he was doing while he thought about his dad and how glad he was the A-hole was nowhere near Fuego this morning. Then he said a prayer because he knew he was going to die and he figured it wouldn’t hurt to let God know he was on his way to Heaven.

  Leaving pretty soon now.

  Then the shooting started again.

  Officer Lee Blaisdell slammed on the brakes and brought his cruiser to a skidding stop as he saw the damage to the side of the police station where the entrance was. The front end of a pickup was partially inside the building where it had crashed through the doors and taken out part of the wall, too.

  Several men had taken cover behind the wrecked pickup and were firing into the station. Blaisdell didn’t know who was in there, but it was pretty easy to tell who the bad guys were here.

  He pulled his Mossberg riot gun out of the clips that held it and floored the gas again, aiming the cruiser at the pickup.

  The men were too busy shooting to notice him coming. He didn’t open the door and roll out onto the pavement with the riot gun until he was almost on top of them.

  It was like something out of a movie—but it hurt a hell of a lot worse.

  The impact against the ground jolted all the way down to his toes. For a second he couldn’t get his breath.

  But he squeezed the riot gun harder and hung on to it for dear life, because he knew his life probably depended on it.

  He looked up in time to see the cruiser slam into the back of the pickup with a metal-grinding roar. One of the invaders was caught between the two vehicles. The collision practically pinched him in half and made his eyes pop right out of their sockets.

  That was like a movie, too, a grisly special effect that made guys gasp and girls scream.

  Lee watched a lot of movies. Played a lot of video games. Was a cop because it was a job. A job that actually had some insurance with it, crappy though it might be. The country’s health care system still hadn’t recovered fully from the train wreck that had almost destroyed it nearly a decade earlier, but Lee had a pregnant wife and some coverage was better than nothing.

  Right now, though, he felt more like a soldier than a cop. This was war, sure enough. He pushed himself up onto his knees and fired a round from the riot gun into one of the guys beside the pickup.

  As that man flopped to the ground, another one jumped onto the crumpled hood of Lee’s cruiser and launched himself at Lee with a high-pitched yell. Lee didn’t have time to shoot before the man plowed into him and knocked him over.

  The back of Lee’s head hit the pavement and he saw stars for a second. When his vision cleared, the guy’s face was right in his, inches away, spit flying as the man screamed at him in some foreign language. His eyes were filled with crazy hate as he locked his hands around Lee’s neck and started trying to choke him to death.

  Lee still had hold of the riot gun with one hand, fingers wrapped around the weapon’s breech. He twisted the gun, poked the muzzle against the cheek of the man trying to kill him.

  The man’s face darkened with rage and got even crazier. His mouth moved and Lee supposed he was still screaming, but he couldn’t be sure because all he could hear was the roaring of his own blood inside his brain as he groped with his other hand for the Mossberg’s trigger.

  The man tried to jerk his head away from the gun. He squeezed harder on Lee’s neck. Lee swung the gun back in line. His fingers brushed something. One finger hooked around, caught the trigger, pulled . . .

  Blood and bone fragments and chunks of gray matter sprayed across Lee’s face as his attacker’s head blew apart. The choking hands spasmed, loosened, fell away from his throat.

  Yelling hysterically, Lee shoved the corpse off himself and rolled the other way.

  He didn’t have his uniform on today. He wore jeans and a flannel shirt. Desperately, he used the shirtsleeves to wipe away the gore on his face.

  Nobody else was shooting at the moment, but he heard brakes squeal somewhere nearby.

  Lee took deep, gasping breaths and tried to get himself under control. He could be in danger again. He looked around and saw one of Fuego’s other police cars stopped at a slant about twenty yards away. Martin Corey, at fifty the oldest member of the department, crouched behind the open driver’s door and pointed his service revolver at Lee.

  “Stay on the ground!” Martin shouted. “Stay on the ground!”

  “Martin!” Lee called. “It’s me. Lee Blaisdell. Don’t shoot!”

  Martin straightened slightly and lowered the gun.

  “Lee?”

  Engines roared somewhere not far off. Lee had the sinking feeling that they didn’t mean help was on the way. He scrambled to his feet and said, “We gotta get inside. Somebody’s holed up in there.”

  Martin trotted over to him. Stocky, with graying brown hair and glasses, he didn’t look like much of a cop. He made no bones about the fact that he was just putting in his time until retirement, when he planned to sell his house, buy a motor home, and travel around the country with his wife. He had told Lee about it many times.

  After today, he might not have a chance to do that.

  First things first, though, Lee reminded himself. If you got in a hurry, it was game over. He motioned for Martin to follow him and trotted toward the police station.

  Pausing in the gaping hole knocked out by the pickup, he called, “Hey! Anybody in here?”

  “Who . . . who’s there?” came a voice from behind the counter.

  “Raymond! Is that you? It’s Blaisdell and Corey!”

  Raymond Brady stood up holding one of the shotguns from the weapons cabinet. He was crying but he didn’t appear to be hurt. They were tears of relief.

  “I thought I was gonna die,” he said.

  “Not today, buddy,” Lee told him. He hoped he could keep that promise. “I think more bad guys are on the way. Do we fort up in here, or do we take off and stay on the move, make ourselves harder to hit?”

  “I have to stay here,” Raymond said. “I’m on duty.”

  “I don’t think we have to worry about rules like that right now,” Lee said.

  Another worry had wormed its way into his brain, and it helped him make up his mind. He had left his wife Janey at home, out by the high school, when he heard the shooting start. He’d told her to stay there with the door locked.

  Now fear for her safety clawed at him. He had to get to her, make sure she was all right. He said, “We have to go, all of us. Martin, we’ll take your cruiser.”

  “Okay,” Martin said. He looked stunned and confused. “Do . . . do either of you know what’s going on here?”

  “Hell,” Lee said. “Hell’s come to Fuego, Martin.”

  CHAPTER 20

  The high school looked deserted and peaceful, Chuck thought, as Ernie wheeled the pickup into the parking lot and circled the school toward the football stadium and the field
house next to it.

  Another pickup and a couple of cars were parked at the field house already. Some of the team members lived close by and had gotten here in a hurry.

  The streets were empty. Everybody was hunkered down in their homes, scared because of all the gunfire, waiting anxiously to see what was going to happen.

  Chuck wished he knew. He figured it wasn’t going to be anything good.

  Ernie stopped next to one of the pickups and said, “That’s Brent’s F-150. I think Pete and Spence are here, too.”

  “Not everybody on the team will show up,” Chuck said as they got out of the pickup. “Some of them, their parents won’t let ’em out of the house, and not all of them will be able to sneak out.”

  He felt bad about putting high school kids in danger, but on the other hand, these were West Texas kids. Most of them owned guns and had grown up hunting. They worked on farms and ranches, some because their families owned the places, others for summer jobs. A few of them had probably worked as roughnecks in the oil patch during the summer. Sure, they spent a lot of time on their phones and tablets, like kids anywhere, but they had a core of toughness about them.

  And Chuck needed help no matter where it came from.

  Lord knows he needed help.

  Half a dozen young men came out of the field house to meet Chuck and Ernie. A couple carried shotguns, and the other four had hunting rifles.

  Brent Sanger, the starting running back on the varsity team, said, “Man, we’re glad to see you guys, Chuck. What’s this all about? What’s all the shooting?”

  “It’s a terrorist attack,” Ernie blurted before Chuck could say anything. “They’re shooting up the town!”

  The boys looked at Chuck, who nodded grimly.

  “That’s right. The shooters appear to be Middle Eastern, so we’re talking about Islamic terrorists.”

  “What do they want in Fuego?” Pete Garcia asked. “This is nothing but a wide place in the road!”

  Chuck had been thinking about that very thing. He said, “Yeah, a wide place in the road that’s just a few miles away from the prison where a bunch of their buddies are locked up now.”

  Looks of comprehension appeared on the faces of the football players. Brent said, “You think this attack has something to do with that?”

  “It’s got to,” Chuck said. “Nothing else makes sense.” He took a deep breath. “I think they intend to take over the town and then attack the prison. But first they’ll try to round up everybody they haven’t already killed and keep them corralled to use as hostages if need be.”

  “We have to stop them.”

  Chuck nodded and said, “That’s what I had in mind.”

  “I wish Andy was here,” Ernie said.

  Chuck looked over at him with a puzzled frown and asked, “Andy Frazier? How come?”

  “Because he’s the quarterback,” Ernie said as if the answer were obvious. “The quarterback always knows what to do.”

  “See if you can find some crutches,” Andy told Jill.

  “You know you can’t get out of bed,” she argued. “Not with a broken leg.”

  “We may have to move around some. I want to be sure I can do it.”

  For the past half-hour, they had been listening to the gunfire that came from various locations around town. Out in the corridor, hospital personnel rushed around and talked in loud, frightened voices.

  When Jill had stepped out and asked a couple of nurses what was going on, they had ordered her to get back in the room and stay there. They hadn’t offered any explanation for the commotion.

  Whatever was going on, it had to be pretty bad. Andy and Jill had seen an ambulance leave the hospital with its lights flashing and siren blaring, but it hadn’t come back yet.

  “I need to go home,” Jill said. “My parents and my little sister . . .”

  “The nurses told you to stay in here.”

  “I know.” She sighed. “And I don’t want to leave you, Andy. I really don’t. But I’m afraid something really bad is happening, and I . . . I have to be sure they’re all right.”

  Andy understood how she felt. His dad was out at the prison today, so Andy was pretty sure he was all right. Hell’s Gate had plenty of security.

  But his mom was home alone, as far as he knew. He should have been there in case she needed help, he thought. If it hadn’t been for this stupid broken leg—

  “Find me some crutches,” he said again. “We’re gonna get out of here. You’ve got your car. We’ll go by my house and get my mom, then we’ll head for your folks’ house.”

  She gazed at him, clearly wanting to believe what he was saying.

  “You really think we can do that?”

  “I don’t think we’ve got any choice,” Andy said.

  He reached down to the IV attached to the back of his hand and pulled it free, wincing at the sharp pain. That made the equipment start to ding, but he didn’t figure anybody would come to check it for a while . . . if ever.

  Jill eased the door open, looked up and down the corridor, then glanced at Andy and said, “I’ll be back.”

  “Just like the guy said in that old movie,” he told her with what he hoped was an encouraging smile.

  While she was gone, he sat up better and then swung his legs off the side of the bed. The one in the cast stuck out in front of him. He was going to have a heck of a time getting around, he thought, but if he took it slow and easy he could manage.

  Thankfully, the leg didn’t hurt all that much. But that might be because he was still pumped full of painkillers, he reminded himself. Once they wore off . . .

  He would worry about that when it happened, he decided.

  Right now there were more pressing problems.

  When he looked out the window he saw smoke rising here and there in town. Fuego was looking and sounding more like a war zone all the time.

  His nerves grew tighter as the minutes dragged past. He had hoped that Jill would be able to find a supply closet or something and grab a pair of crutches without having to ask anybody. If she had to talk to the nurses, they would probably argue with her.

  A couple of loud reports somewhere in the hospital made Andy jump. He almost slid off the bed and had to dig his fingers into the sheets and hang on to keep from slipping. That could have been bad, he thought.

  But it seemed like everything on this Sunday morning was turning bad.

  The door swung open. Andy’s breath caught in his throat.

  It was just Jill. And to his great relief, she had a pair of crutches in her hands.

  “I got some,” she said. “Andy, did you just hear—”

  “Yeah,” he said as he reached for the crutches. “That sounded like shots.”

  “And they were close. Like, here in the hospital.”

  Jill’s face was pale with fear, despite her healthy tan.

  “There’s an emergency exit at the end of this hall,” Andy said. “I think it lets out into the parking lot. We’ll go that way so we don’t have to go past the nurses’ station and the lobby.”

  She nodded. He positioned the crutches under his arms, then swung his weight onto them as she stood ready to grab him if he started to fall.

  He wished he had something other than a stupid hospital gown to wear. At least they had let him keep his underwear on.

  It was bad enough having to make a run for it on crutches. He didn’t need his bare butt sticking out in the wind, to boot.

  Andy had had to use crutches his freshman year when he hyperextended his knee, so he knew how to maneuver on them. As he started toward the door with Jill hovering beside him, he said, “Check the corridor.”

  She opened the door, looked, and then nodded to him. She held it open wider so he could get through.

  They moved out into the hall, which was deserted at the moment. That struck Andy as odd, but right now he would take any lucky break they could get.

  He and Jill had just turned toward the emergency exit marked with a re
d sign over it, when a harsh, accented voice called, “You two! Stop! Stop there!”

  Andy’s head jerked around as Jill grabbed his arm in fear. A man had come around the corner where the nurses’ station was located and now strode toward them.

  Andy had seen enough movies to know that the thing the stranger was pointing at them was an automatic weapon.

  Quietly, he said, “Jill, get behind me and make a run for the door.”

  “No! I won’t leave you—”

  A middle-aged man stepped out of one of the patient rooms as the gun-toting stranger stalked past. This man had a straight-backed chair in his hands, and he swung it high as he tried to bring it crashing down on the intruder’s head.

  The man with the gun must have heard him, though, because he swung around and the weapon belched fire and noise. Bullets thudded into the chair-wielder, who must have been visiting a patient, and knocked him backward. He dropped the chair and collapsed as blood welled from his wounds.

  “Run!” Andy told Jill. He moved as fast as he could on the crutches, knowing he had to try to get away, too, since she wouldn’t desert him.

  They were both going to get shot in the back, he thought.

  But when the automatic weapon went off again, the slugs smashed into the wall just above the emergency exit. One of them hit the sign and shattered it.

  Andy and Jill froze. They had no choice. All the gunman had to do to chop them to pieces was lower the barrel a little.

  “Stop there,” the man said again. “Come with me.”

  More men appeared as the two young people made their way slowly toward their captor. More men with guns appeared and began forcing patients and visitors out of the rooms.

  They were gathering up everybody in the hospital and taking them somewhere, Andy thought.

  Like animals being led to slaughter.

  The glass doors at the hospital’s main entrance slid aside for Phillip Hamil as he approached them.

  Just like any obstacle moved out of his way sooner or later, he thought. There might be setbacks now and then, but in the end he would emerge triumphant. It was Allah’s will.