The Point Of A Gun: Thriller

by Steven W. Kohlhagen

  “Samms thinks there are more than three of these guys.”

  “Me, too.”

  Cheese looked around. “There aren’t any others around here.”

  “Those two are waiting for something. They didn’t just come here to kill their friend and then take a nap. And remember, they suspect I’m around somewhere.”

  “Good point. What do you think then?”

  “I think we wait. Either their friends are coming or they’ll send for them.”

  “If we let them leave, they’ll be long gone before we can get to our car unobserved and take after them.”

  “In that truck? You underestimate yourself, Cheese.”

  “Thanks. So where do you think the detonator is?”

  “Here. As you might have noticed, they don’t trust their colleagues much. They’re scared to death and have already killed their buddy. I don’t see them hanging around a massive bomb that some other dirtbag out there in the desert controls. No. I think they have the detonator and I think they are awaiting word to proceed.”

  “Then, let’s just shoot them and get this over with.”

  At precisely that point, someone opened fire toward their left. Where May was.

  She opened up with her Glock. Then as suddenly as the firing had started it stopped.

  Cheese and Tom looked over to where May had been.

  “I’m down,” they heard her say from the emptiness to their left.

  “Neither dirtbag has moved,” Cheese said. “Those two squatting were dummies. How’d we fall for that?”

  “Did you see where the firing came from? How many there are?”

  “It looked like from both sides of the storage unit. There were four of them firing. No idea how many there are in total.”

  Cheese tossed the now-useless sniper rifle aside. They each unholstered their Glocks and unshouldered their Uzis.

  “Two against four,” he said. “Poor guys. Hardly seems fair.”

  “You want the ones on the right or the left?” Tom asked.

  “You’re the one over the hill. You choose. Do we need to worry about the detonator?”

  “Too late for that now. I’ll take the ones on the right.”

  “Letting even one of them get into that truck will be fatal now. We can’t follow them if we’re pinned down out here.”

  “Got it. Good luck, Cheese. Let’s go. Now.”

  They simultaneously rolled out of their positions and were rewarded with four volleys of ineffective machine gun fire from the sides of the building.

  Nothing from May, even though he was closer to her now, Cheese thought. Definitely four shooters.

  He opened up on where he had seen the firing. Quickly followed by Tom.

  Nothing but bullets hitting the metal sides of the building, ricocheting toward the back. Away from the truck.

  They probably didn’t have more than five minutes before cops started arriving to check out the noise. Same problem for the dirtbags. But the dirtbags had no compunctions about killing law enforcement cops.

  Cheese rose and dashed toward where he thought May had been, dove into a gully as the firing started up again.

  They had moved to the back of the building. At least on his side. No shooting on Tom’s side.

  Then Tom opened up on the other side of the building. They returned fire.

  He heard Tom yell something.

  And then a continuous firing commenced to his left. Toward the back of the building. Return fire started heavy, then stopped.

  Who had opened up on them from over there? Tom couldn’t possibly have run around the entire building.

  Feds? Not good.

  Hopefully May.

  Cheese raced toward the left side of the building, Uzi cradled in his left arm, Glock raised with his right. Whoever was on the left had a clear view of him. Hopefully May.

  He crept, then crawled along the wall. It was now light enough to make out the lay of the ground. Asphalt coming up shortly.

  He heard somebody against the back of the building say something. It wasn’t English and it wasn’t Spanish. He recognized it. Made him homesick for Afghanistan. A little.

  He saw a shadow to his left, sliding toward a clearer view of the back of the building.

  From here, neither the shadow, nor he could see the truck anymore. He was now counting on Tom.

  He waited.

  Nobody moving that he could tell. The talking had stopped.

  Nobody shooting.

  Then two things happened at once.

  The figure on his left began firing into the back of the storage building and he heard the truck start up.

  Planning time over. Cheese jumped up, turned around, and raced back to the front of the building toward the truck.

  Would they detonate it here? Commit pointless suicide?

  Where was Tom?

  He saw a second figure climbing into the passenger seat of the truck as it started to move forward.

  Cheese shot him in the back. One shot with the Glock.

  He raced toward the truck, the terrorist’s lifeless feet dragging along the ground. The driver’s attention was in the direction he was trying to guide the truck. Machine gun fire opened up to his left. The window blew out, and the driver lurched to his right as the truck ground to a halt.

  Leaving the two of them to who he hoped was Tom, Cheese now raced for the cover of the storage unit.

  Somebody shot a volley at him as he dove into the unit.

  He slid toward where the shooting had come from. Both guns pointed toward where he hoped the terrorist was.

  A figure left the safety of the unit and dashed for the back of the truck.

  Cheese leveled him with one pull on the Uzi’s trigger.

  Silence.

  If anybody else were alive, they weren’t advertising it.

  Cheese waited. He figured maybe two or three minutes before somebody came to investigate the noise. He could afford thirty seconds.

  He waited.

  Nothing.

  Then, “May?” he said. “Tom? You okay?”

  “I’m good,” Tom said. “A flesh wound.”

  “Any dirtbags left standing?” Cheese said.

  “None here,” Tom said.

  “May?” Cheese said.

  “Would you please stop outing me from my hiding spots?” she said, standing right behind where he lay.

  Cheese whirled around. “Where the hell were you?”

  “There’s a back door. You can go check out the two dead ragheads back there. Right through that door.” Pointing with her bloody left arm.

  “You okay?”

  “A flesh wound.”

  *

  Cheese put the Samms’ card under the truck’s windshield.

  As they left, he dialed her number the third time. Their signal.

  “This better be someone with good news,” she said. Whispering.

  “I don’t have time to talk, Samms,” Cheese said. “Six terrorists dead. One of them actually killed by his friends. The other five opened up on us, leaving us no choice. We had to get out of there before checking for the detonator, Samms. The New Mexico cops arrived on the order of a minute after we evacuated.”

  “Your weapons?”

  “We left them there as planned. That was the only part of the plan that actually worked.”

  “All three of you okay?”

  “Just a couple of flesh wounds.”

  *

  The President was sitting in Air Force One on the tarmac in El Paso when the call came.

  “Yes, Moose? What is it?”

  “Sir, the Paladins just claimed they killed five terrorists who were taking a dirty bomb into place to detonate it. ISIS.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Ten minutes. They called real time.”

  “Where?”

  “Where are the bodies or where were they going to detonate the bomb?”

  “Moose. I’ve got a meeting and then a speech here in two hours.
Just tell me what’s going on.”

  “The bodies are at a storage unit in Santa Teresa, New Mexico. Ten to fifteen miles from where you’re sitting. According to the Paladins, ISIS was going to blow a nuclear device in a truck a block or two from your speech. During your speech, actually.”

  Chapter 44

  “So, Licht?” Nancy Moffett said. “You starting up the Rogues Task Force again? Replacing Moose?”

  “Something like that.”

  Licht looked at the three of them. Each looking at him curiously. Or at least pretending to be looking at him curiously.

  “As you each know, the Paladins have now saved the President’s life.”

  “And,” Linda Simmons said, “the First Lady’s, the Commerce Secretary’s, and the Director of DHS’s.”

  “And at least a couple of hundred thousand Americans,” Tom Edwards said.

  “And Mexicans,” Nancy said.

  “This can’t go on like this. Somebody will leak what we’re dealing with here. The President wants the Paladins stopped. Permanently. Wants them to stand down. Wants them to switch from overt vigilante actions to alerting official counter-terrorism forces. Officials will then take over for them from there.”

  “Moose already told us that Samms had refused that months ago on a call,” Nancy said. “He said that she said they had no faith in the ability of our people to execute. I think his exact words were, ‘She said, ‘They don’t accept our Intel. They won’t accept our execution plan.’’”

  “Well, one of you knows whether or not that is an accurate quote.”

  He tossed the latest card on the table, “Samms” on the front and “GHAG” on the back. But underneath “GHAG,” somebody had written “needs to be prevented.”

  If writing “needs to be prevented” doesn’t force them to start working together, nothing will.

  “The President and I now want Samms and her Paladins to come in. This will be an impossible shit storm when it hits the press.”

  “Any idea what Samms meant by ‘needs to be prevented’?” Linda asked, staring at the card.

  “Whoever knows probably isn’t telling. But we think this is a reference to the need to prevent amateur vigilante acts. We think maybe Samms is worried that when the public gets wind of them, copycat groups could emerge and could go off the reservation.”

  “But no idea what GHAG has to do with anything, right?”

  “Right.”

  He looked at Linda. Waited.

  “Me either,” she frowned. “So, Licht, how do you propose getting the Paladins to come in when you don’t know who they are? We’ve been through all this so many times before.”

  “That’s why the four of us are here. We’ve been tasked with stopping the games and getting this done. Time has run out. Then I’ve been asked to bring them in.”

  “The Rogues Task Force, the sequel,” Linda said.

  “That’s our job. Which, of course, would be much easier if one or more of you were prepared to confess, right now. If so, just say ‘Okay, Licht, it is I’.”

  Silence.

  “No volunteers? Then I would like to propose a parlor game.”

  They all laughed.

  “At the first meeting of the original Task Force, Linda had proposed playing Clue while drinking,” Nancy said. “Before we all cleverly narrowed it down to just the three of us.”

  “No, I’m thinking something more like Truth or Dare.”

  “Over drinks?” Linda asked.

  “No, let’s dispense with the drinks. What I want you each to do is to ask each other two questions. I want you each to ask the other two whatever you think might help the President and me ferret out the identity of the Paladins? The first time we go around the room, you each ask them under the assumption that you are completely innocent. Not a member of the Paladins. The second time around, ask a question you might ask if you were the guilty party, hoping their answers would deflect attention from you to them.”

  “This is silly, Licht,” Tom said. Then, seeing the look on Licht’s face, “In what order?”

  “I happen to have three numbers in that hat in front of you. Whoever wants to, can draw first.”

  *

  May answered the knock at the door.

  She and Cheese were in a motel room in south Santa Fe.

  Like a cliché, an old man in black, bifocals with a black hat and a black bag, white beard, was standing outside the door.

  “May I help you?” May asked.

  “I’m Doctor Holliday. A man called and asked me to come to this room and ask for May and Cheese.”

  “I’m May.” Opening the door. “This is Cheese.”

  “May I come in?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  He pointed to her arm. “He said you needed help with that.”

  “No questions asked?” she said.

  “I never ask him any questions.”

  “He happen to mention his name?” Cheese asked.

  “He said you’d know him as Tom.”

  “That’s not what I asked.”

  “As May politely said a minute ago, Cheese, no questions asked.”

  He looked back and forth between the two of them.

  “Now if you’ll excuse me, Mr. Cheese, I think I need to attend to the lady’s arm.”

  “When you’re done, will you at least be gracious enough to tell us if your name really is Doc Holliday?”

  “Sure.”

  *

  Tom Edwards looked thoughtfully at the piece of paper with the number one written on it.

  “So much for ladies first, I guess,” he said.

  Licht smiled and nodded toward Linda and Nancy.

  “This is the question I’d ask if I was innocent and sincerely wanted to know if the Paladin was my best friend or a CIA bureaucrat, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Okay, I’d like you each to answer how you expect to get out of this mess without getting killed in action?”

  “At some point,” Nancy said, “it’ll get too hot and we’ll just stop. It’ll no doubt be the Bureau closing in on us, and I can’t afford to be caught in the crossfire.”

  “Bureaucratic fire or gunfire?” Linda asked.

  Nancy smiled sweetly at her, but didn’t answer.

  “My turn to answer the Colonel’s question,” Linda said. “In the unlikely event that any of the currently inept domestic security agencies figure me out, I'll simply cut a deal with the President. My Intel for amnesty.”

  Showing her piece of paper with the number two, Linda said, “My turn to ask. How did you pull this off without ever telling your best friend? How did you resist the temptation to share? How could you hide it from your best friend?”

  “That’s three questions,” Tom said.

  “You know I don’t play by the rules.”

  “Cheaters never win,” Nancy said.

  “Why don’t you just answer the questions and let the professor keep score?” Linda said.

  “Precisely to protect the friendship,” Tom replied. “It simply wouldn’t have been fair to Nancy or to her family, who also happen to be my friends, to be caught in the middle.”

  “You stole my answer,” Nancy said. She turned to Linda. “Same answer.”

  “Cheaters never win,” Linda said.

  “My turn to ask,” Nancy said, pulling the bright yellow package of MM peanuts out of her purse. Took three out. All red. “What are the chances of that?”

  Nobody answered.

  She looked up. “All right, how about, is it possible for you to now turn your vigilante activities into something purely good? Is there a way for you to leverage what you’ve been doing to dramatically increase the benefits for the country?”

  “I think this is pretty obvious, Nancy,” Linda said. “The President cuts a deal with me for amnesty and sets up a covert operation under our control that uses our Intel capability to work with the domestic intelligence agencies to stop domestic terrorism in its tracks.”


  All three of the others just stared at Linda.

  Finally, Licht said, “Colonel?”

  Tom looked flustered. “I think Linda just outed herself, didn’t she?”

  “Just answer Nancy’s question, Tom.”

  “If I thought leveraging the effort were possible, we wouldn’t be doing it the way we are. It had to be a small, unofficial group. In this country, at least as I understand it, individual rights have to be honored by government forces, even covert government forces. That’s the conflict we live with day after day after day. That’s the whole reason vigilantes have always arisen and taken matters into their own hands. Official forces can’t participate with us or help us. Simply not possible.”

  “So, Colonel, your answer to Nancy’s question is no.”

  “Right. The sad reality is that the American judicial system, combined with the innate inefficiencies of intelligence bureaucracies, leaves us hopelessly vulnerable to lawless terrorism.”

  “Time, then Colonel, for your question as if you are the guilty party.”

  “No fair. It should be a snake draft. Reverse order coming back. It’s Nancy’s turn again.”

  They all laughed.

  Licht shrugged. “Okay by me. Nobody ever accused me of not being reasonable.”

  *

  “Do you need time to heal, before heading back, May?” Cheese asked.

  “I’ll be fine. I can carry my bag with my good arm.”

  “Can you drive to the Albuquerque airport, or do you need time.”

  “I’m fine Cheese. We need to get back to D.C. by tomorrow. Stop worrying about me and focus on how we’re going to stop the Al Qaeda suicide bomber in Philly. Or start worrying about Tom. He got shot, too.”

  “Yeah, but his actually was a flesh wound.”

  She made a face.

  “I thought Samms turned the Philly guy over to DHS and the FBI,” he said.

  “She did, but they both said he’s a known lone wolf and has done nothing actionable. Questioned him and then released him. Told us he’s in the federal government’s counter-radicalization counseling program. A model pupil. The usual.”

  “When is he supposed to be blowing up the Philly train station?”

  “Day after tomorrow.” She grabbed the door knob. “See you in D.C.”

  And she walked out the door.