Larry backpedaled to the stairs. “Let’s go, then, before the fire traps us up here.”
The second floor was smokier and noticeably warmer, but not yet burning. Looking down the hallway to the stairs leading to the first floor, there were visible flames coming up from the landing.
“Must have thrown one through the front door,” Larry said. “Probably hit the back door, too. It’s what I’d do if I wanted to trap somebody inside.”
Chuck ran to get a better look down. “You’re right. We don’t stand a chance on these stairs.”
“Side windows,” Peter said. “We’re all in good enough shape to take the fall. Which direction gives us the best chance of escape?”
“My mom’s room,” Larry said. “She knew better than to give me the bedroom where it was easy to sneak out.”
Peter had been in the house enough times to know the layout. Opening the door to Irene’s room, he’d barely stepped inside when bullets blasted through the window and pierced the wall next to him. He barely got down before the line strafed right across where his face had been. “No go. Somebody’s got that one dialed in.”
He heard the distinctive sound of one of the homemade incendiaries landing in the room and popping.
“Think that’s harassment, or are they driving us to another kill zone?” Larry asked.
“I think there was only one guy at the front of the house,” Chuck said. “Best odds that way.”
The only room with a window to the front was Irene’s home office. “I imagine whoever’s out front has that one on lock, too,” Larry said.
“We’ve got to do something,” Peter said, daring a look through Irene’s room again. Her antique wood dresser had caught and was starting to burn intensely. Another burst of automatic fire kept him from getting a better look at the situation. “Let’s try your room,” he said to Larry.
The three gathered around another door and went down to their knees. Larry turned the knob and high-crawled, moving as fast as he could for the side window. Like his mother’s room, there was also a window to the back of the house.
Peter figured the other person they knew of watching the back of the house had seen the door open, because something came through the rear window. He didn’t have to say anything—Larry seemed to understand what it was, too, and immediately reversed direction. When the package detonated, splattering thick, flaming fuel, some of it hit Larry.
Immediately, Chuck sprang into action, throwing himself across Larry, trying to smother the burning stuff. Peter grabbed the blankets off the bed and pressed them into the closest flames on the floor. Together, he and Chuck got Larry out of the room, slightly burnt but no longer on fire.
The scent of the fuel still hung heavily on Larry. “Definitely no chance of me making it through a burning room now,” he said.
“Your mom’s office is our last chance, then,” Chuck said. “Are we down to just making a run at the window, hoping we move too fast to hit?”
Several guns started firing in front of the house, with deeper reports than the snappy pops of an M-16. “Front is clear! Front is clear!” somebody called out.
Peter felt a massive wave of relief wash over him. Their fight must have attracted the attention of friendly forces, and it sounded like they now had backup. “Go!” Peter shouted. Chuck led the way, kicking in the office door, then used his rifle butt to smash the window. No bullets came into the office, and the rifles down on the street kept firing. With the glass busted out, Chuck jumped out the window. Larry followed, then Peter.
The three found themselves protected by two of the town’s new deputies and a couple other men. “Thank you,” Larry said.
“We’ll get this guy, if you want to throw in at the town hall,” one of the deputies said. “They need the help.”
“You going to join us?” Chuck asked.
“Negative. We’re running cleanup, keep you guys from getting hit from behind.”
“Thanks,” Peter said. “Stay safe.”
“You too. Now, go!” the deputy said.
Peter, Chuck, and Larry saw more townsfolk with the distinctive red cloth strips gathering at the end of the block. They ran up and folded into the group.
“What’s going on?” Larry asked.
“We’re getting ready to close in. There are still some thugs inside the building, and they’ve got backup over there,” a man said, pointing out at the far end of the town hall’s rear parking lot. “Another bunch just hit from the other side of the building. We haven’t seen Grossman or Davis for a while, so Red here is in charge.”
“We just got here. Where do you need us?” Peter asked Red.
Red looked him and his two buddies over. Peter knew the guy. He was another military veteran, an old Marine who’d put twenty in from the seventies to the nineties. “Good to see you. We’re getting ready to push those jackasses over there.” He pointed out to the men at the back of the parking lot. “Once we get them shut down, I need some fast movers to get up against the building, start tossing some Molotovs in through the windows.”
“No can do,” Larry said, waving his hand over his charred shirt and pants. His clothes still stank of the propellant in the firebomb that had splattered him.
“Shit,” Red said. “All right, how about this. There are windows into basement rooms along that wall there. Can you secure those rooms from the outside, light up any of Prange’s idiots hiding out in them?”
“Yeah,” Peter said. “We’re on it.”
“All right. We’re going to be laying down a lot of fire to cover you and the Molotov crew, but if we falter, get your asses back here and we’ll regroup, all right?”
“Got it,” Peter said, dropping his magazine to check how much ammunition he had left. He counted seven in the magazine, plus two full twenties still on his belt. Even though he felt he was good at firing discipline, less than fifty rounds seemed thin for the task at hand. Even with the Glock on his belt, Peter felt like he had way less firepower than he’d like.
Then he reminded himself that everybody was running low. If he decided to sit this one out on account of low ammo, somebody else who was just as light would have to take his place. He looked at the open ground between the staging area and the town hall, at the basement windows. There was no way he’d be able to live with himself if he took the easy out and sent somebody else off to do the job.
“We ready to do this?” Peter asked Chuck and Larry. They both nodded, looking simultaneously scared and resolved. He turned to Red. “On your signal.”
30
Tom Grossman found himself in a dark room in the basement. His leg was in agony and he had a total of nineteen rounds of ammunition to his name. At one time in his life, that might have felt like a lot.
It didn’t anymore. He was buttoned up behind a big metal safe, the best rock-solid cover he could get, but he had to shoot offhand if he wanted to stay protected.
Twice, he’d heard shootouts in the hallway outside the room, both seeming to be inconclusive and result in people retreating back up the stairs. A third exchange of gunfire came with an intense hail of bullets from the enemy side of the hall and the unmistakable sound of people getting hit from the friendly side.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway, coming from the opposing side, and somebody burst into the room. In the dim light coming from the one small window high on the wall behind him, Grossman saw an Army uniform and no red cloth strip on the arm. It was one of Carter’s phonies. It took three shots for him to plug the guy. Another man rushed the room as the first one was thrown back by the round that had slammed into his chest. Grossman had one round left, so he held until his aim steadied before squeezing the trigger.
The second man must have been wearing a vest, because even though he took a solid, clean hit to the upper torso, he was thrown back but didn’t go down. In the moment the guy was stunned by the impact, Grossman dropped his empty mag and slotted his last full one. He took another quick shot that impacted the man’s chest
again, doubling him over in pain. That presented the opportunity Grossman needed to carefully aim and finish the man with a head shot.
During all of this, the sound of gunfire from above hadn’t stopped or slowed. He could hear voices but there was just too much shouting and confusion for him to really make anything out or even tell which way the battle was going. All he knew was that there was a lot of action going on.
He suspected that the stretch of hallway with the two stairways to the basement was a complete kill zone. If it weren’t, he expected a lot more of Prange and Carter’s men would be coming down.
With his cane missing, Grossman didn’t need to worry about how to fire a rifle while holding it anymore, and there were two of them just outside the doorway to the room he was hiding in. He got up and started limping over, when he heard more footsteps running down the stairs, from the same direction the two dead men in front of him had come from.
“He’s in there,” came a voice from down the hallway. As fast as he could, Grossman got himself back behind the safe.
“Burn him out?” a second voice asked.
Grossman did not want to hear that. He knew that if they threw one of their improvised firebombs into the room, he was done for. Wedged back behind the safe like he was, he’d be trapped. If he got any of the fuel on him, it’d be a brutal burning death.
“Not yet,” the first voice said. “Too many of ours right upstairs.”
Grossman leaned just far enough out from the protection of the safe to get a clear view of the doorway. He held his pistol, aimed and ready for anybody that showed their face in the doorway, until his vision started to swim and his arm drooped.
It was then that something flew into the room. He feared the worst, that they’d changed their minds about smoking him out. The object hit the floor and popped, surprisingly loud. The bang was enough to make Grossman feel like he’d been smacked upside the head with a stop sign. As the initial shock of the blast wore off, he realized he felt small stings on the right side of his body.
The cinderblock wall in front of him had dozens of tiny, fresh scratches and gouges in its paint.
“Frags,” he said to himself as he heard another one thrown into the room. He was better prepared for the second blast, even though he didn’t have time to get his fingers into his ears. While the shrapnel stung where it had hit him, it seemed like most of it had done no more damage than getting hit by a BB gun. He didn’t feel any bleeding or the piercing pain of something penetrating deep into his flesh.
He peeked out from behind the safe just in time to see a uniformed man standing in the doorway scanning the room. Neither man had their weapon fully at the ready when they caught each other’s eyes, and both ducked for cover. Grossman shifted position so he could brace his left arm with his right, and aimed at a spot just inside the doorway from the jamb, at about gut height on a standing man.
The low aim paid off when somebody peeked into the room from a crouching position. Two quick shots both slammed home, throwing the man back.
A third improvised frag bomb was thrown into the room. It had come from the side of the door closest to Grossman’s position, and hadn’t been aimed, just tossed in. It landed flat on its side and rolled.
It gave Grossman a chance to get a good look at it. It was a spun aluminum water bottle with stabilizing fins glued to the cap, and a detonator that looked like it was based on a nail and bullet casing coming out of the bottom.
Deciding it was time for a gamble, Grossman lunged for the bottle, only to be met by a blast of gunfire as the man stepped into the doorway and opened up with his M-16. Bullets ricocheted wildly off the cinderblock walls. Splinters of shards of something peppered Grossman as he pushed off with his arms to get back behind the safe. The incoming rounds suddenly stopped, and he heard an empty magazine bounce off the floor.
He quickly brought his weapon up and aimed at the doorway. When the man appeared in it, Grossman fired one shot, jerking the trigger and sending the round wide to slam into the wall. His second shot was closer, by which time the other man had squeezed his own trigger, sending more rounds flying in.
While he waited for the other man to reload again, he tried to mentally reconstruct the last thirty seconds and figure out how many rounds he’d fired. Thinking about that almost made him miss his window of opportunity. He brought his weapon to bear just as the man appeared in the doorway again. Two quick shots, one of which hit. For good measure, as the man slid down the wall on the far side of the hallway, Grossman hit him once more, seeing a very definite burst of blood from the entry wound in the middle of the guy’s chest.
“…gotta do the damn thing yourself,” floated down the hallway, undeniably Prange’s voice.
More footsteps on stairs, this time from the other stairway, then the bark of M-16s from both directions. Carter’s voice broke over the din. “Get your ass down there, and clear the damn hallway.”
The volume of firing increased, definitely more coming from what Grossman considered the enemy side than the friendly one. People screamed or grunted, bodies hit the floor.
A man passed the doorway from the enemy end of the hallway, eyes focused to the front. Grossman fired, hitting him in the arm. The man leapt backward, vanishing before he could get a second shot off.
He figured he had half a magazine left, if that, and Carter and Prange knew which room he was in. Grossman didn’t even waste his time trying to figure his odds of survival as he tucked a little farther back behind the safe. They weren’t good, and he didn’t see any way to change them. What he could do was be a force multiplier for the rest of the people in his town. He knew that both Prange and Carter were obsessed with taking him out, and as long as they had their attention on him, they weren’t leading their men.
His mission, then, was to distract Prange and Carter as long as he could, to give the people of Bowman time to take advantage of a disorganized and directionless enemy.
31
The defending townsfolk had Prange and his men stuck in one half of the first floor. Cartel men controlled three of the four sides of the building, but the defenders had control of the second floor. The height advantage made the open space around the building a killing field, only crossable if a good deal of suppressing fire were thrown at the windows.
Somehow, they’d gotten enough blankets and jugs of water and who knows what else into the two rooms that had been hit by firebombs to put the fires out, but a lingering scent of half-combusted hydrocarbons and smoke still hung heavy in the air.
Inside the building, the main hallway was a death zone, with a constant stream of lead flowing both ways. Prange knew that Grossman had gone down the basement stairs. He’d sent guys down three times to try and deal with him. The first two had been repulsed. The third party never came back up.
He was seriously considering just turning his back on Grossman and getting out of town, but he and his men were effectively pinned down where they were. The main doors in and out of the building were only accessible through the main hallway. It seemed like the town had a couple guys with good, long-range rifles and steady hands dialed in on the windows.
The best chance of escape would either be for Carter to bust through the ring of townsfolk around the building, or for him to get Grossman out of the basement and use him as a bargaining chip or human shield to get himself safe passage out. If only the damn teens he’d had in the basement hadn’t managed to make a run for it.
For a few minutes, the whole system seemed to be at equilibrium. So many people were plinking down the hallway that nobody dared step in. With none of his men going for the windows, the distant snipers were quiet. There was harassing fire in both directions outside, but the cartel men weren’t making any assaults.
That all ended when a burst of whistling started outside. One of the cartel men near Prange cocked his head, then pointed to two of the rooms the cartel men controlled. “Relief incoming, front door, those windows.”
“Light it up!” Prange s
houted, pointing at the hallway. He picked up an M-16 dropped by one of his men who’d been killed and added to the deadly storm. Rounds were clattering off the outside of the building, shots coming from townsfolk on the second floor. Shouting broke out from the rooms the signal man had pointed out, and then a big, ugly guy with ten times the muscle above the waist than below stepped out of one of them.
“It’s about time you got here, dumbass. They were going to shoot me in the morning!” Prange shouted.
“Took me a bit to get a solid crew together,” Carter said.
“Seem better than the first ones we got.” The fact that they’d penetrated all the way to the town hall was a much bigger accomplishment than he would have been able to make with his original men.
“Time to get you out of here?” Carter asked.
“Not yet. Grossman’s trapped in the basement.”
Carter grabbed a rucksack off one of the men that had come in with him. “Let’s pop all these, burn the place down around him.”
“Not a chance. I’m not going to believe that slippery bastard is dead until I put a bullet between his eyes,” Prange said.
Carter smiled and shoved his man aside. “I was hoping you’d say that.”
“You got enough men that we’ll get back out of here?” Prange asked.
“If we stop talking about it and get it done, yeah.”
“We could probably use one or two of these to at least distract the guys at the far end of the hall,” Prange said, summoning the man with the ruck.
“Red ones are fire, green are shrapnel.”
The cartel man took a knee. Prange dug out two green canisters and one red. “Pull the ribbon and throw?” he asked, guessing at how the things worked.
“You got it,” the cartel man said.
Prange shifted two of the canisters to his left hand, keeping one of the green ones in his right. He pulled the ribbon with his teeth, and threw it, football style, down the hall. Instead of the satisfying pop that he’d come to expect from his limited exposure with the things, he just heard the canister bounce off the floor and roll.
Age of Survival Series | Book 3 | Age of Revival Page 18