He bashed the second man’s head in from the side, caving his features in until he looked more like roadkill than a human being. A quick check of both men’s pulses confirmed that they were dead. There was blood soaking into the mattress, and arterial spray across the headboard, floor, and nearby wall. It would have been a crime scene investigator’s wet dream if that sort of occupation still existed.
The wound in his left palm bled profusely, adding to the chaotic bloodbath. He would need to bandage it as soon as the opportunity arose. But first, he had to make sure that the house was clear. “Actually…” Grady mumbled aloud.
He searched the two piles of clothing on the bedroom floor and was rewarded with a folding knife that boasted a four-inch blade and a pair of brass knuckles.
“Worst. Gang. Ever,” Grady said slowly, making himself chuckle. These two idiots were obviously the lowest of the low on the gang’s hierarchy, otherwise they wouldn’t have been left to guard the guy who was supposed to be their boss soon. Unfortunately, the terrible arsenal of weapons they employed was not indicative of the group as a whole. The ones he’d faced the night before had a much more varied and deadly selection of weaponry than these two. He’d yet to go up against anyone in the city with a firearm, which was surprising given the sheer number of guns in the police stations alone, never mind the street gangs, or even the private citizens who had weapons out on Long Island.
He tossed the brass knuckles back onto the pile of clothes and opened the knife. He tried to hold the closet rod in his left hand while he held the blade. It was no good. The guy had bit him too deeply. Weighing his options, Grady folded the knife and slipped it into his pocket. The club was a better weapon choice out of what he’d been given.
“Hey!” The voice made him whirl around, prepared to strike. “What are we supposed to do?”
He lowered the club. The brunette stood in the hallway, still topless. The other one peeked around the doorframe and gasped. “Just go back into the bedroom,” he ordered. “I’m going to try to get out of here.”
“Bullshit. Scorpion will kill us for not warning everyone. We’re coming with you.”
“I can’t have you—”
“Shoulda thought about that before you went off and killed Rico and… Is that Jefferson?” She looked over to the black girl and asked, “Did you know Jefferson was gay?”
She shook her head, but didn’t say anything.
“Ladies, I need you—”
“You need to protect us,” the brunette interrupted. “This is your mess. I ain’t gonna get killed over some Captain America motherfucker coming in here and busting up our meal ticket. You did this shit.” She pointed at the bodies on the bed. “Now you’ve gotta help us out and protect us from Scorpion.”
He sighed deeply. She was right. They may have been the gang’s whores, but it didn’t appear that they’d chosen that lifestyle. It was simply where they found themselves. And now he’d fucked up their “meal ticket” as the girl called it. “Fine. Fuck. Go get your clothes on.”
The white girl put her hands on her hips and thrust one to the side. “You really think we’re that dumb?”
“What?”
“We go back to the bedroom and you leave us here. No way, Mister Hero. You come back with us while we get our stuff.”
“I’m not gonna leave you.”
The girl marched into the room and grabbed his wrist. He grimaced. She turned his hand over to examine the wound. “You need to get that cleaned up.” Her features had softened seeing his injury.
“Later.”
“I heard Scorpion. He’s expecting you to spend an hour with me and Carla. You got time to let me wrap that hand up.”
Grady cursed under his breath and allowed the girl to lead him back to the bedroom. “Get dressed, Carla,” the brunette directed the other girl. “I’m Mandy.”
“Grady,” he replied as the girl picked up the bedsheet.
“You don’t have a knife or anything, do you?”
“As a matter of fact.” He dug into his pocket and emerged with the pitiful folder. “Here you go.”
He sat on the bed while Mandy used the knife to cut several strips of cloth. By the time she was done, Carla had her boots and coat on. “Can you wrap him up while I get dressed?” Mandy asked.
Carla nodded and took the strips of cloth. She bent over her work, wrapping the bandages expertly. “Great work,” Grady stated once she’d tucked away the running end. “Not too tight, but not too loose.”
“She was a second-year nursing student when everything went to shit,” Mandy offered.
“You don’t talk much, do you?” Grady asked. Carla looked into his eyes for the briefest of moments, then looked away, shaking her head “no”.
“She don’t talk much,” Mandy confirmed. “Scorpion and the boys beat the shit out of her about six or seven months ago and she ain’t been the same since.”
Grady frowned. “I’m sorry that—”
Muffled gunfire outside cut him off. It was the sound of suppressed M-4 rifles. He stood and rushed to the window. From his vantage point on the second floor, he could see several soldiers bounding into the street out front. There was a support by fire position farther back.
The window shattered as a round burst through. The girls shrieked in terror as Grady dove into them, driving them to the ground. “Sorry,” he grunted as he lifted himself off their petite frames.
“What’s happening?” Mandy asked, nearly in a panic.
“My friends are coming to get me,” he replied with a shit-eating grin. He’d figured he was on his own, but it looked like Lieutenant Murphy had grown a pair.
“Your friends almost shot you,” Mandy pointed out.
“Yeah, well, they aren’t the brightest bunch,” he answered. “Did you see if there was anybody else downstairs when they brought you here?”
“No idea.”
The gunfire outside was sporadic and it sounded as if the men were focused more on maneuvering than shooting. Given the lack of guns that the gang seemed to have, that was probably a smart thing to do. Why waste ammo with suppressive fire if you didn’t need to?
“Grady!” the familiar voice of the LT called from outside. “Grady Harper. We’re coming for you!”
“Come on, girls. Let’s go get ourselves rescued, huh?”
He stood and pulled Carla to her feet. Then he heard several quick suppressed gunshots coming from nearby. They were outbound rounds. A pit opened in Grady’s stomach as he remembered Scorpion telling him that he had his weapon. It sounded like the man was putting it to use now.
A massive volley erupted from the soldiers in response, sending Grady to the floor once more. “Where… What house is Scorpion in?” he demanded.
“Next door,” Mandy said. “The white two story.”
“Okay. You girls stay low. I’m gonna go put an end to this shit.” Carla grabbed his wrist, her big doe eyes imploring him to stay. “You’ll be safe, just stay low. I’ll be back for you. I promise.”
“You better come back for us, Grady,” Mandy said. “We’re trusting you to be a good man. Please don’t leave us to die here.”
He nodded curtly. “I won’t. I’ll get you out of here after I stop Scorpion.”
Grady tugged his arm gently from Carla’s grasp and high-crawled toward the doorway. He had to stop Scorpion before he killed somebody in the platoon.
26
* * *
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
MARCH 7TH
“Grady! Grady Harper. We’re coming for you!” Jake yelled around the side of a car that he was using for cover.
“You need to get your ass down, LT,” Sergeant Gallegos cautioned him just as several bullets burrowed into the concrete near Jake’s feet. He dove to the ground behind the car.
“I thought Phil said they didn’t have any guns,” Jake grunted, exhaling forcefully. The men of Staff Sergeant Gallegos’ squad began firing toward a white two-story house. Jake had
n’t seen where the shots came from, but given the soldiers’ response, it must have been that one.
“That’s a suppressed rifle being fired at us,” Gallegos replied when the firing subsided. “Sounds like Harper’s weapon.”
Jake eyed the man thoughtfully. “You think he’s dead?”
“I don’t see any way that he lost his weapon without being dead, sir.”
Jake frowned. “Alright. If he’s dead, then we can’t kill them all. We need to find out what they did with the body so we can go get it. If they’re all dead, we can’t get that information.”
The sergeant nodded. “Okay, sir. What do you want us to do?”
Jake shrugged. “For right now, we press on. We gotta get over there and take out whoever is shooting at us.”
“Got it.” Gallegos looked over to his Alpha Team leader, who was crouched beside the oversized tire of an old Jeep Wrangler. “Bound up, Specialist. We need to clear that house.”
The team leader gave him a quick thumb’s up and turned away to direct his men. Bravo Team began firing in the direction of the house while Alpha sprinted across the road to the line of cars on that side of the street. Then they began to suppress the building once they were set.
“You ready, sir?”
“Yeah,” the lieutenant grunted as he pushed himself to his feet. “Let’s do this.”
He and Sergeant Gallegos ran side-by-side toward the cars while the remainder of Alpha team moved up as well. Jake’s foot caught on something and he stumbled, falling forward. He threw his hands out to stop himself and twisted his wrist as he rolled on his side. His helmet thudded loudly into the pavement and his rifle skidded away for several feet, disappearing underneath a car.
“You alright, sir?”
Jake groaned loudly. The fall had hurt like hell. He lay there on his back near the middle of the street for a moment looking up at the sky. Then, the sounds of suppressed gunfire from the north reminded him that he needed to get to cover. He tried to roll over, but his damn body didn’t want to listen.
“I—” Jake didn’t know what to say. He wanted to move, but he really couldn’t. “I can’t move my legs,” he called out.
“Fuck,” Gallegos hissed.
Soon, Jake felt himself being pulled along the roadway by the handle on the back of his vest. He came to rest under the cool shadow of a vehicle. “What’s happening?” he asked, suddenly colder than he’d been a few minutes ago.
“Goddamn it. Medic!” Gallegos called out. “Medic!”
“He’s back with the reserve,” Jake replied stoically. “Did I break my back in that fall or something?” He felt himself jerked awkwardly as hands opened his vest. The Velcro fasteners sounded impossibly loud to his ears.
“You were hit, sir. Looks like it came in just below your vest. Stomach.”
He winced in pain as pressure was put on his abdomen. Then, Gallegos rolled him onto his side. His helmet remained in contact with the ground and kept his head from falling.
“Fuck.”
“What is it?” Jake asked.
“Medic!” Gallegos screamed again, trying to make his voice heard across the distance. “Hold on, sir. We got you.”
He could see the sergeant’s shoulders moving, doing something behind him, but Jake couldn’t feel him doing anything. “I can’t… What is it?”
“Exit wound. Don’t worry, sir.”
Soon, he was rolled back onto his back. The sky was very blue. It had started out as such a foggy morning, but the sun had burned everything off and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It reminded him of when he was a kid, outdoors, laying on the ground and staring up at the sky. He liked to play a game and make animal shapes out of the clouds. Too bad there weren’t any clouds today.
The sound of boots running up brought him out of his revery and back to the moment. He didn’t feel like he’d been shot. Wasn’t he supposed to feel terrible or something? He was cold, and his wrist was incredibly painful, but that was about it.
He could hear hushed voices, but couldn’t understand what they said. Someone rolled him onto his side again and then back down. Specialist Mitchell, the platoon’s only remaining medic after Weir stayed back in Kansas, came into view.
“Sir, you’ve been hit in your back,” the medic said. “Can you feel this?”
“Feel what?” He honestly had no idea what the kid was talking about.
“Okay. I’m gonna give you a shot. It will help with your pain.”
Jake nodded. “I’m not really in a lot of pain. My wrist hurts.”
Mitchell reappeared and said, “You’re gonna feel a slight stick and a burn.”
He waited for the aforementioned stick and burn, but felt nothing. That was interesting. “Shoot me straight,” Jake mumbled. “What happened?”
“Um,” Mitchell was in the process of tearing open a QuikClot bandage. “I think it might be your spinal cord, sir.”
“What?”
“The bullet entered your abdomen below your belly button and exited your back. There’s a pretty big exit wound back there, but I can’t tell how much damage is done. You’ll need surgery.”
Jake laughed bitterly. “Surgery? Who the hell is gonna do that?”
“I will, sir. We’ll get you someplace safe and—”
The medic attempted to move him, sending shockwaves of pain up his back. Jake screamed out in agony. He may not have been able to feel anything below his pelvis, but everything above it was still firing on all cylinders. “Okay, okay,” Jake gasped. “Just leave me be for a minute. I need some time.”
“Move up!”
Jake tried to tilt his head to see what was going on with the platoon, but he couldn’t see anything from his position. “What’s happening?” His teeth were chattering. He felt like an idiot.
“Uh…” the medic disappeared from his line of sight for a moment, rewarding Jake with a view of the clear blue sky once more. Then it was ruined by the reappearance of Mitchell’s face. “The guys are moving up to the house. They’re at the front door.”
There were a few more rounds fired, followed by some far off shouting. Jake was unclear as to how long everything took. Time seemed to be both dragging by and speeding faster than he could possibly imagine.
The analytical part of his brain told him that he was dying. He had a gaping wound in his back that needed surgery and there was nothing that anyone could do about it. There weren’t any doctors left. There wasn’t any way to get a blood transfusion. They didn’t have the necessary medications for sedation or to fight infection. Jake was fucked. He’d tried to do the right thing by his men and he was dead because of it.
And then, he suddenly felt at peace and he clung to that thought. He’d done the right thing by his men. He held that thought in the forefront of his mind. His men knew that he’d do anything for them, including giving his life for them. He’d trained his whole life to be a US Army platoon leader and he’d accomplished that goal. He could go to the afterlife knowing that he’d done the right thing.
He closed his eyes and let himself slip into the welcoming blackness.
27
* * *
MANHATTAN, NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
MARCH 7TH
Grady crept down the stairs. He could hear several voices of gang members over the din of bullets coming from outside. They were scared. He wrinkled his nose. Scared shitless apparently.
The foul odor of feces and metallic scent of blood increased as he stepped one foot onto the main floor. He examined the scene carefully. He was in a narrow house, probably a townhome by the look of it. Less than ten feet away on the living room floor, two bodies lay in puddles of their own blood, one face down, the other curled into the fetal position. Broken glass scattered the floor where the platoon’s bullets had poured into the home. To his right, the voices continued.
Wait… he told himself as he cocked his head to listen. It was one voice. Praying. He turned toward the sound.
Old floor joists creaked
under his feet as he crept along the hardwood. If they were even halfway listening, they’d know that somebody was coming toward them.
“Rico? Rico, is that you?” a voice called immediately before a head peeked around the corner of the wall separating the dining room and kitchen area from the front of the house. “Jefferson?”
Grady stabbed outward into the wide eyes of the gangbanger. The curtain rod’s jagged edge sank deep into the man’s cheek, easily penetrating the soft skin there. The guy screamed incoherently, falling backward into the dining room.
The fall pulled the wooden dowel from Grady’s weakened, blood-slick grip. He sprang around the wall and grabbed the flailing end of the curtain rod, pulling it free of the man’s face. More gunfire from outside caused him to duck behind the short wall that the gangbanger had been using for cover.
The man wailed hideously as he crawled toward the back door. There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the house.
When the gunfire lulled once more, Grady stood and flipped his spear around to the clubbed end. He walked forward quickly and brought it down onto the back of the man’s head, producing more screams of agony.
Fuck. He hadn’t hit him hard enough. He lifted the curtain rod and bashed it into the back of the gangbanger’s head. Bloodlust tore through him. He was excited for the kill. He pounded the man’s head over and over until the rod broke. He continued with the smaller, pointed stick until it lodged itself into the open skin along the man’s neck.
The red subsided from his eyes and he felt himself get lightheaded. He sat heavily in the dining room chair. Grady had been overcome by the need to kill this man. It had flooded his system with adrenaline and now he was worn out, completely exhausted in the aftermath. Then he understood. That’s what had happened to him the previous night when he’d been captured. He’d gone on a much, much longer killing spree, relying on his body’s adrenaline to fuel his madness. When it ran out, he collapsed, giving the gang the opportunity to take him.
Five Roads To Texas | Book 11 | Reciprocity [Sidney's Way 3] Page 18