Charlie's Requiem: Democide

by Walt Browning

  “Bru! Medical in the back seat!” John shouted.

  Tanya Bedford leaned her head back and stared at the plush ceiling of the limousine. The red stain was spreading; a major blood vessel had been hit. Bru scrambled into the back, while John continued to try and put some distance between him and their enemy.

  With the car bouncing about while they avoided the stalled automobiles to their front, and the occasional ping of lead coming from their rear, Bru had to forcibly move the fat coward out of the floor board area where he had taken refuge. The little girl suddenly appeared next to John as Bru pushed her into the front seat to make room for his efforts at first aid.

  Bedford began to snivel again, while Bru tore the woman’s shirt open, revealing a bubbling wound a few inches below her collarbone.

  “It isn’t an artery!” Bru called out as they careened into a van that was just far enough into the lane of traffic that it took off their right front bumper as they passed by. The metal on metal rending brought another girl-like scream from the government man, causing the woman’s daughter to scream as well.

  “SHUT THE HELL UP!” John shouted at the cowering man. “YOU’RE NOT HELPING!”

  Bedford bit his lip as they felt another bullet impact the back of the car.

  Bedford’s wife was starting to gasp for air, Bru immediately recognizing a sucking chest wound. The bullet had passed through the upper lung area, decompressing the chest cavity and deflating her lung.

  “I’m putting a seal on the wound!” Bru announced as he pulled out his IFAK (Individual First Aid Kit) and tore open his HALO chest seal package. Applying the adhesive patch to the exit wound on her front, he leaned her forward and applied the other seal to the entrance wound on her back. With the wounds sealed, the leakage of outside air into the chest cavity surrounding the lung was blocked, and her lung stopped collapsing on itself.

  “She’s still having some problems breathing!” Bru said. “Should I ‘burp’ it?”

  Peeling back the seal to uncover the entrance wound during her respiratory cycle could allow for the lung to re-inflate. But it had to be timed properly, or it might worsen the situation.

  “Let it go. She’s not turning blue and she’s stable for now.” John shouted.

  All of a sudden, John felt the car begin to pull heavily to the right. He was losing his power steering and something was trying to drag them off the road.

  The tell-tale sound of a flat tire assaulted their ears. The “WHUMP, WHUMP, WHUMP” of the deflated tire and the bouncing of the car as it bottomed out on its right side, told both agents that their ride was over.

  “I’m pulling in over there!” John announced, as he quickly pointed to a larger house on an upcoming corner on their right. “Looks like it’s all block,” he continued, referring to the appearance that the home was built from concrete blocks and not wood frame.

  John let the wheel take them up and over the curb on the corner, sending them into the house’s driveway at a 45° angle. He locked up the brakes, and after grabbing his belt and rifle, jumped out of the car just as it came to rest. He flung the back door open, and grasping Bedford by collar, he shoved him into the open garage they had just pulled up to.

  The man stumbled and then crawled to the back of the room, never once turning back to help his wounded wife. John checked the man; then, making sure he stayed low, he high-crawled back to the vehicle where Bru had pulled Tanya out of the back seat and placed her flat on the ground. The two men pulled her into the garage as well, depositing her next to her husband.

  “The girl!” Bru said and scurried back to the broken down car. Bullets started pinging off the walls above them, and tiny holes appeared on their side of the car. Contrary to the movies, .556 bullets often passed through cars like a hot knife through butter. Other than the engine block and axles, little in a car could stop even a .223 caliber centerfire bullet from slicing through it.

  Bru dragged the girl back as John searched over the top of the car for a target. He put his M4 up to his shoulder, and looking through his ACOG optic, scanned the house and road in front of him.

  Several motorbikes and an older pickup truck stopped a few hundred feet in front of them. A half-a-dozen men jumped off their bikes or poured out of the pickup’s bed, finding concealment and cover in the yard to John’s front.

  “Move them inside!” John commanded his partner.

  Bru began to pick up the wounded woman, when John barked at him.

  “Take the Secretary. He’s our main principal. Guard him with your life!”

  Bru gave John a dissatisfied look, but he grabbed Bedford by the collar and dragged him into the house.

  John set up a defensive position inside the garage door. His car blocked his view of the advancing men, so he went to the back of the room, and in the shadows of the garage, he mounted a few stacked boxes and took a superior position about five feet above ground.

  Sitting in the shadow, he was invisible to the attackers. But being up and above made him more vulnerable to incoming fire. He had to choose; more cover or better line of fire. Given the worthlessness of the car as a place of cover, he decided to have a clear shot at anyone who broke concealment on the other side.

  Tanya began to moan, a good sign that her breathing was adequate, but bad in that it could give away their position.

  “Bru!” He hissed at the open door his partner had used to move Undersecretary Bedford into the house.

  Bru appeared, and seeing the woman and child still in the garage, he helped them get inside as well. Meanwhile, John scoped the yard to his front. Movement by the side of the house earned a well-placed shot, and Drosky was rewarded with a scream of pain.

  Several guns spoke at the same time, sending John to the concrete floor. The back wall was riddled with bullet holes; he had just escaped certain death by dropping down.

  Seeing the futility of their position, John scurried into the kitchen of the abandoned home and found Bru with the Bedford family. The man and his family were lying on the floor, and in the case of the Undersecretary, in a puddle of his own urine.

  “We need to bug out the back,” John said.

  Bru just shook his head and nodded to the woman. She was nearly unconscious, likely from a combination of stress and blood loss. The wound was sealed, but there might be internal bleeding seeping into the right lung itself. This occlusion of the airspace inside her wounded lung would make her feel like her she was drowning. She was paralyzed with pain and fear. Her husband was no better, his eyes and heavy, rapid breathing indicating that he was done as well.

  “OK,” John announced. “We make a stand here.”

  He turned to his partner. “Bru, you scout the front rooms on the other side of the house and get a line on the front yard. I’ll do the same on this side. Now go!”

  Bru hustled out the kitchen and into the bedroom hall at the far end of the house.

  John moved to the kitchen window and peered quickly out front. He saw several men repositioning themselves to cover the front of the building. Glancing back, he saw a sliding glass door that led to the home’s backyard.

  Great, he thought to himself. I need to cover three openings. The door to the garage, the front of the house and the rear sliding-glass door.

  Two men moved quickly from cover across the street, running to John’s right in a flanking maneuver.

  “Too quick,” John said to himself as he began to raise his battle rifle to see if he could snap off a shot, when he heard the crack of Bru’s rifle and watched with satisfaction as one of their two assailants dropped to the grass. The other made it to the side of the road where a car sat. John took careful aim at the driver’s side door and let lose 10 rounds in rapid succession. He peppered the side of the car and was rewarded with a scream coming from the ground behind the late-model Honda.

 
We just might hit them hard enough to back them off, John thought. But in the distance, the sound of more vehicles arriving put that wishful thinking to rest. Nearly a dozen men, all toting black battle rifles, rolled up to the house across from him and disappeared in its back yard.

  “You see that?” John called out to his partner.

  “Couldn’t miss it!” Bru replied. “Looks like this is it.”

  “Maybe,” John replied hopefully. But he knew that when they began their assault, the only thing John and Bru could do was take as many of the enemy with them as they died in a blaze of glory.

  “You need to protect me!” The sniveling man cried.

  Hearing a crash in the garage, John moved back to the Bedford family. He placed himself in front of them, putting his body between his three charges and the garage door.

  “They’ll have to go through me to get to you!” John stated with more conviction than he felt. In his heart, John knew that this was the end of the line. He just wanted to make them pay as dearly as he could before they took him out.

  Bedford crawled directly behind John and grasped Drosky’s legs. John reached back and put his hand on the man’s head, giving him a gentle pat to comfort the him.

  “I got you,” John said as several bullets tore through the garage door. The half dozen or so rounds shredded the front living room window and struck the cabinets behind them. One of the bullets found its mark, tearing into John’s level 3a body armor. Feeling like someone had slugged his chest with a hammer, John grunted and fell back slightly.

  “Oh My GOD! You’re hit!” Bedford shrieked.

  “I’m fine,” John said back and regained his kneeling position.

  Squatting down behind the kitchen counter, they were hidden from the rear sliding door. John heard the door open on its tracks, and popping quickly up, he sighted in on two intruders and dispatched them with a double tap to each of their heads.

  Within seconds, someone yelled from outside and not getting the response they wanted, all of the guns out there let loose on the poor old house with John, Bru and the Bedfords taking what cover they could.

  The .556 rounds smashed the home’s windows but didn’t penetrate the block, at least on the first go around. However, their continuous bombardment of the structure began to wear down the concrete, and chips of glass began to be mixed with chunks of block. It wouldn’t be long before the walls gave way and the attackers would have a direct line of fire into the house, sealing their fate.

  Less than a minute later, several rounds impacted near them as the gunfire finally had worn down the walls of the home. With bullets beginning to impact close by, John jumped up and tilted the refrigerator onto its side, providing him and the Bedfords with some much needed cover.

  The rattle of the rifle rounds pinged and cracked all around them. Several impacted into the downed icebox, one round ending up partially extended from the appliance’s back panel, its kinetic energy spent as it penetrated the wall and made its way through the metal of its front and back doors.

  John could hear Bru firing from different positions. “Shoot and Scoot” was drilled into the heads of any cop or rifleman during training. The best way to die in a gunfight was to stay in one place; and so far, his partner’s movement was keeping him alive and drawing some of the fire away from him and his “charges.”

  John suddenly realized that there was total silence, then the roar of a machine gun could be heard, and his heart sank as he realized that the incoming larger caliber bullets would make short work of them. He leaned back and covered the Undersecretary with his body, doing his best to shield the man from the upcoming onslaught.

  But the bullets never arrived, and John realized that whoever was running the machine gun was either a terrible shot, or they were directing fire at the enemy.

  “Wait here!” John commanded Bedford.

  Drosky leapt up and went to the front window. Across the street, a house was being shredded by bullets coming from the north, above or behind their house.

  Quickly, the familiar “whump, whump, whump” of a gunship helicopter could be heard as it soared over their sanctuary. On the other side of the street, several men tried to escape, but the helicopter door gunner was deadly accurate and his bullets ended any chance that their enemy combatants had.

  John cautiously opened the entrance to the garage and saw two men staring outside its raised door, trying to decide if they could get past the flying death machine. John sighted in and took both out before they knew that they had their back to another deadly foe.

  Within a minute, another helicopter set down in front of the house, the black DHS Blackhawk idling on the street. A squad of men jumped out and approached the house.

  “STAND DOWN NOW!” John called to Bru. John put his weapon down on the ground and put his hands on his head, interlocking his fingers. He lay down face first on the floor, just as the front door burst open and the rescue squad tactically entered the room.

  The call of “clear” could be heard throughout the house, and within another minute, the Bedfords were being loaded onto the waiting helicopter then whisked away downtown.

  John and Bru were quickly debriefed in the house. John knew that he was in for a long day back at HQ, so he took some time to check out his attackers.

  It didn’t take long to determine that these men were street gang members, likely MS-13. The international ring was characterized by the extensive tattoos with which the gang members adorned themselves. John had seen MS-13 in action and arrested a couple of their members. The ink and dress of the men on the ground screamed street gang. The question was, how did these thugs get hold of sensitive information about the arrival of a dignitary like Micah Bedford.

  He decided to hold his tongue on this speculation. It could be that DHS was using the gang, but in typical street logic, the gangs were not adverse to double crossing their temporary ally. The second line of thought was that the gangs thought they could take DHS out.

  More than likely, however, the third possible reason for the attack was that the gang would have used the Bedfords as leverage to get ransom from the government. DHS would have gotten Micah Bedford back, and probably the wife and kid too; but the victims of MS-13 often had missing body parts when they finally got home. A finger or ear sent with the ransom note usually set the tone for the exchange. Mrs. Bedford and even her two-year-old daughter were especially lucky that they hadn’t been lost to these thugs with rape a common method of holding control over the hostages.

  A truck appeared after a while, John and Bru loaded up with the remaining agents and they all were transported back to Hughey Street and headquarters. The gang members’ bodies had been piled into the middle of the road; and after being doused with fuel, were set ablaze. While looking out the back of the truck, John watched as the smoke of the impromptu funeral pyre rose above the city, eventually mixing in with the ashes from all the flames that were burning themselves out in other parts of the stricken metropolis.

  Finally, the truck stopped, and although the day felt like it had to be near its end, John saw that it was only 1:00 in the afternoon. When he stepped out of the truck back at headquarters, both he and Bru were immediately greeted by a representative from the captain’s department, and they were led away to the administrator’s office.

  Their escort deposited the two men in the captain’s reception area; but before they could settle in, the door to Carlson’s room swung open and they could hear the sound of laughter coming from within.

  “Step in, Please!” The administrator’s lovely-looking secretary said.

  She moved away from the door, allowing John and Bru space to enter. The door shut behind them and they both marveled at the sight of their captain and Micah Bedford sitting at their boss’ desk, smoking cigars and drinking some brown liquor from an ice-filled tumbler.

 
“Here they are!” Bedford said. “These are the boys that joined me in fighting off those hooligans.”

  “So, the Secretary here tells me you two acquitted yourselves commendably!” Carlson said proudly.

  John, picking up on the game Bedford was running, immediately saw the benefits of playing along.

  “Just doing our job, sir!” John said, earning him a glance from Bru that would have melted tungsten.

  “I told you!” Bedford said, giving John an appreciative nod. “These men protected my Tanya and brought her back alive!”

  “Micah here told me you shielded her body during the attack. Is that so?” Carlson asked.

  “Well,” John started. “She was wounded and all. I guess we were just doing what you trained us to do!”

  “And you let him use your Glock in the firefight? You never give up your weapon!” Carlson accusingly said to John.

  “Well,” Bedford added before the others could answer. “He wanted to protect me too, but I just couldn’t stand by and let them put their lives on the line for me. It was the least I could do! I ordered Agent Drosky to give up his sidearm and protect my beautiful Tanya and her darling little girl. And he did just that! He put his body in front of her as bullets ripped through the house! He even took a round in the chest. Thank God he had his armor on, or who knows what would have happened.”

  Bru finally picked up on the coward’s game as well, and following John’s lead, replied.

  “Captain Carlson, we wouldn’t have been able to hold them off as long as we did if it weren’t for Undersecretary Bedford’s efforts. We were honored to serve at his side!”

  “No boys, the honor is mine!” Bedford replied. “These men are special and I want them for my personal guard. That is, if you approve of it, Tommy.”

  Captain Tommy Carlson scratched his chin, pretending to consider the Undersecretary’s “request.” But in reality, all knew what the answer was going to be well before Carlson agreed.