“We’ve discovered that throw doesn’t work in hallways. You hit wall or ceiling at too shallow an angle,” Carter said. He took the other green canister, pulled the ribbon, and then gave it a hard underhand toss up in a high arc. The canister bounced off the ceiling, hit the floor with a metallic clack, then it blew with a satisfying, almost ear-splitting bang.
Prange rounded the corner, ready to rally his men to rush the basement stairs, when he caught sight of a green canister coming back at him. He watched as his own death sailed down the hallway toward him in slow motion, like a little rocket ship. It ricocheted off a wall and fell harmlessly to the floor.
“Told you!” Carter shouted, reaching behind Prange to toss the red canister. It popped and sprayed a thick liquid that detonated while it was still dispersing.
It created the opening they needed. Carter and Prange ran for the basement stairs with two men behind them, the rest pouring a torrent of suppressing fire down the hallway to cover them.
32
While waiting for the signal to go, Peter assessed the situation they were facing. They were to the southeast of the town hall. Inside the building, Carter’s men appeared to have control of the southern half of the first floor. The second floor was all townsfolk; the status of the basement was unknown. From the shouts that could be heard coming from the building, Grossman had last been seen tumbling down there. Both sides had made forays, but nobody had any idea what the situation was there.
Outside the town hall, there were pockets of Carter’s men concentrated to the east and west. They’d made several attempts to get to the building, but with defenders controlling the second floor and holed up in houses or on rooftops in the surrounding blocks, that open land around the building was a killing field.
Peter’s heart was pounding. Looking over at Chuck and Larry, he could see them trying to hold onto their reserve. He really needed to get the command to go, because the more time he and his friends stood waiting for the command, the more time he had to think about the open parking lot, flanked by Carter’s men, that they had to cross. He felt like he needed to act soon, or he’d lose his nerve. The pace of whistling picked up. Which side was doing it, he couldn’t tell. It was only when the signaler who crouched next to Red tugged on his sleeve that Peter swallowed and mentally prepared himself. The volume of messages flying around had to be either final confirmation that it was go time or communicating a new factor that would scrap the plans.
Red crouched down and had a few words with the signaler. He looked over his shoulder, and said, “Get ready, ladies and gentlemen.” Peter watched him hold out his left hand up in a fist, and place his right in front of the signaler, with three fingers extended. He folded one in, a second, and the last. The signaler started blasting out a code while four men with Molotov cocktails started lighting the rags on their bottles. Larry ducked behind Chuck.
“Set!” Red shouted, looking over his shoulder again. Guns started firing, puffs of dust appearing all around the windows of the rooms Carter’s men held. From the second-floor windows, Peter could see muzzle flashes.
Red opened his left fist and pointed it at the building. “Go!”
The plan called for the crew with the Molotov cocktails to go first, with Peter’s trio hot on their heels.
As they crossed the parking lot, the rate of fire never let up, but at least Peter didn’t detect any rounds flying close. A corner of his awareness noticed that the bullets shattering brick around the first-floor windows of the town hall had shifted. The closest window wasn’t being hit at all, while the next couple had started taking a lot more.
One of the Molotov men threw his bottle at the first window. It arced neatly in, and there was a small flash of blue flame as the glass shattered and the gasoline inside lit up. The second and third men hurled their packages at the next windows. One went in, the other shattered on the outside of the building.
Peter stopped paying attention to the firemen when he was a couple steps from the building. He hopped and let himself slide feet-first up to the building like he was on a baseball diamond. Larry and Chuck followed suit, the three of them coming to rest just outside one of the basement windows. At first glance, there wasn’t anything moving in the room.
Farther down the building, somebody leaned out a window. “Four bogeys downstairs, two locals, maybe Grossman too!”
Peter took another look into the room. Whether it was stray bullets from the firefight or sharpshooters doing them a favor, the glass was busted through. “We need to even the odds,” he said.
“What?” Larry asked.
“I’m going in. You coming?” The opening was just large enough for Chuck to squeeze through, without an equipment belt. Even Larry, thin as he was, wouldn’t make it through with his tac vest on.
“Shit,” Chuck said. “Yeah. I’m in.” Larry looked reluctant, then his face hardened and he nodded.
“Strip ’em,” Peter said, unbuckling his belt. “If I hit the ground alive, send all these down after me, then follow.” With the barrel of his rifle, he cleaned any shards of glass out of the frame. He poked his head in to get another look at what he was about to get himself into. Nobody was inside, and the door was closed. There was definitely shooting going on in the hallway, though.
As he pulled back to position to jump through, he heard the sounds of engines. One was the familiar growl of the big cargo trucks that Prange and Carter had been driving around. The rest of the noise sounded for all the world like dirt bikes. Peter looked down the road, and sure enough, it was one of the big trucks, flying strips of red cloth from the right-side mirror. The men on dirt bikes were wearing red on their left arms and right ankles.
The truck, he could understand. The town had captured one, and Carter had been driving around in another. The dirt bikes, he couldn’t explain, but they all seemed friendly.
“Come on,” Peter said, sticking his feet through the window frame and sliding in. The firing in the hallway was still going hot and heavy, but he didn’t hear anybody moving down it. One person on the north side was obviously in a lot of pain, but it didn’t sound like Grossman’s voice.
One of Peter’s buddies handed his gear belt down, then a tac vest and a second belt. As Larry and Chuck dropped in, he handed them their gear.
“We step out that door, we’re going to get shredded,” Peter said. “Let’s hold tight and be ready. Enemy will come at us from the left, friends from the right.”
There wasn’t anything in the room to hide behind, no furniture or cabinets, just a few mostly plastic folding chairs. If somebody came through the door, their survival was going to depend entirely on getting the drop on foes or making it instantly clear who they were to allies.
The sound of a body in a great deal of pain tumbling down steps came from the right side of the hallway. Two bursts of automatic rifle fire silenced the voice.
Carter sounded off loud and clear from the left. “Mayor Dipshit. Why not step out and save the rest of your town from dying?”
“I’m going to kill him,” Chuck said.
“You surrender, we’ll use you to negotiate passage back out of your little shithole town,” Carter continued. “Nobody else needs to die today.”
“Today,” Larry said. “If he gets away, he’ll be back again.”
“Hush,” Peter said. He was trying to get a clearer idea of what the situation in the hallway was. With only Carter speaking, there was no way to tell exactly how many people they’d be facing.
Carter’s voice boomed down the hallway again. “It’s your only smart option. If we have to pry you out of that room, we’re going to keep on killing and burning.”
“I don’t negotiate with criminals or terrorists.” Peter felt a huge weight fall off his shoulders at the sound of Grossman’s voice. His body didn’t relax any, but hearing the mayor’s voice steadied his nerves and made it feel like a brave move, not a suicidally stupid one, to drop into the basement, especially since the rooms directly above were very
likely actively burning.
“Steady…” Peter said as three sets of footsteps moved down the hall. He raised his rifle and aimed it at the door. His two buddies did the same. “As soon as we hear them pass, I’ll open the door, cross the hallway, and open up,” he hissed. “One of you fires from the doorway. Third man, be ready. If we get hit, pull us back in and we make our last stand here.”
“I’ll take number two slot,” Larry whispered. “Chuck’s got the muscle to pull us both in if we’re down.”
Chuck nodded.
“Come on, Grossman. Do the right thing. Play it smart!” Prange yelled as he passed the door to the room.
Peter shifted his weight a little bit. “Damn it!” he said. Both Prange and Carter were in the hallway. If they could take both out at once, Bowman and the area around it would be a lot safer. It would be a huge win, which made him feel a bit queasy in his stomach, the way he always did before a big game if he let himself think about it too much. He forced himself back into the moment, pushing all thoughts of the future out of his mind, focusing only on the task at hand.
“Gimme one of those,” Carter said, now noticeably past the room.
Out of the corner of his eye, Peter saw Larry nod. Chuck patted him on the shoulder.
“Three,” Peter hissed, putting his hand on the doorknob. “Two…One…Go!”
He turned the knob and yanked the door open, hand going to the stock of his rifle so he could raise it. He started squeezing the trigger while still bringing the weapon up into firing position, getting lead downrange as fast as he could with a semi-automatic. To his immediate left, Larry’s rifle started barking.
Peter found out the hard way that trying to run and accurately shoot from the hip at the same time was well-nigh impossible. Even with his targets being concentrated in a tight knot, he saw no sign that a single round managed to land. Even worse was the unmistakable sound of gunfire coming from behind him. He threw his shoulder into a door across the hallway and crashed through it.
As the door gave way, Peter stumbled over his own feet and went down hard. He felt an intense burst of pain as one of his magazine pouches sank into his side between his hip and the bottom of his ribs, and he banged an elbow on the floor. It was a small mercy that he could detect no other serious wounds. Having been shot once before, a couple weeks earlier, he knew exactly what a bullet tearing through his flesh felt like.
The sound of gunfire in the hallway kept going, robbing Peter of a moment to recompose himself. He rolled over onto his back and brought his weapon up, aiming at the doorway. The first thing he saw in his sights was Larry on one side of the doorway across the hall, firing toward the end of the hall where some of Prange’s men had the mayor pinned into a room, and Chuck on the other side, shooting toward the stairs. Bullets were tearing chunks out of the cinderblock walls of the basement rooms.
Peter heard Chuck yell, “Shit!” and grab a handful of Larry’s shirt, yanking him backward into the room across the hall. The two were barely clear of the doorway when something hit the jamb with a sharp, percussive popping sound. He was very familiar with that particular sound as well, so he rolled to the side, feeling the magazine pouch dig into his gut again. It hurt, but he knew he couldn’t stop rolling as flaming gel splattered into the room.
Some of the fuel had gotten onto Peter’s gear belt and his clothes. He stripped the belt off first and shoved it away from him, then rolled frantically and slapped at his legs and side. He got the flames on his clothing put out, but not before they reached his skin in a few spots.
The next problem was that the room was filled with boxes of paper and old wood furniture. Whatever was in those makeshift firebombs, it wasted no time igniting anything flammable that it touched. The town hall was set on slightly sloping land, which meant that half of the rooms in the basement of the building had windows too small for an adult to crawl through. While there weren’t any more bullets flying down the hallway, that seemed like a risky prospect. He was sure that there were enemy guns fixed on the doorway, just waiting for him to step out. And if he did, where would he go? The room Chuck and Larry were in was burning even more fiercely than the one he occupied, and he had no idea what shape his two friends were in. He couldn’t hear or see them.
As he was watching out the door, trying to figure out if he should risk it, another firebomb came flying down the hallway and detonated inside the room Chuck and Larry occupied. While he was relieved that he didn’t hear any signs of pain or panic coming from across the hallway, the fact that he heard nothing at all made him fear the worst.
“Rifle,” Peter said to himself, realizing that he’d tossed it aside to free up both hands to get his gear belt off. He found his rifle deeper into the room, fortunately well away from the burning clutter. Unfortunately, in his rush to get his belt off, he realized he’d thrown it to the opposite side of the room, where it was getting a second fire going.
Outside the room, he heard Prange shout something about a red canister. A second voice, from the direction the firebombs had come from, yelled, “One!”
Unless he could retrieve the belt, whatever rounds were left in his SKS magazine were all he had. He was about to drop the mag to check when another canister flew into the room from the hallway. Peter instinctively turned his back to it and curled up. It popped, but the burst sounded a lot different, and he felt a sensation like a dozen bees stinging him all at once.
Footsteps followed immediately. Peter rolled and brought his rifle up, just in time to crack off a quick shot at a man who’d appeared in the doorway and was sweeping the barrel of his rifle across the room.
Peter’s shot hit, and the man stumbled backward. Immediately, Peter jerked the trigger twice more in desperation, both shots going wide and high. He tried to focus and give the trigger an easy pull for another shot, but nothing happened. He watched the man stumble and fall over, with blood pouring out of his chest, and realized his first shot had done the job, and that he’d wasted his last two rounds panic firing.
He looked over to his left, where his gear belt with a couple fresh magazines sat in a pile of flaming bankers’ boxes. Feeling terribly exposed in the middle of the room, Peter crawled up to the doorway and pressed himself against the wall. He felt a little more secure there, and the air coming in from the hallway was a little better, giving him a moment to try to collect his thoughts and figure out what to do next.
There was a sudden shadow across the doorway. Peter looked and saw skinny legs holding up a barrel chest and two arms bigger around than his legs. Silhouetted against the flames in the room across the hall was the unmistakable shape of Hank Carter, holding a pistol.
33
“The hell?” Prange shouted. Those gunshots had come from way too close. He turned to see somebody flying across the hallway, desperately squeezing off rounds. He had at least one backup in the room he’d just left.
The man with him and Carter pivoted to take aim. Meanwhile, the two men he’d left behind to guard the other stairway up from the basement were shifting their focus from the top of the stairs. He thought things were going to get pretty hairy, but the high-powered rounds were punching into the cinder block walls and shattering instead of ricocheting wildly down the hallway. There were concrete chunks and small splinters of bullets flying, but it didn’t seem like anything immediately lethal.
Then one of his guys at the end of the hallway tossed a firebomb, and that shut the whole thing right down. A second firebomb into the door on the left side of the hallway got that room burning bright.
That allowed Prange to turn his attention back to his original target. The mayor was still tucked in behind a big safe, nice and tight. The homemade fragmentation bombs were turning out to be little more than annoyances. Neither he, Carter, nor their grunt had any firebombs on them, which would have done the trick quite nicely. Just one of those tossed in, and Grossman would have been barbequed in his little bunker at the back of the room.
“Got any red ones left?�
� Prange called down to the end of the hallway.
There was one man crouched on the stairs, watching the doorways to the two burning rooms. There was a motionless body next to him in a slowly expanding puddle of blood.
“One,” the man said.
Prange beckoned him to come over. The man nodded and tucked the red canister into a cargo pocket, then took a green canister from his pack. He yanked the ribbon to arm it and threw it into the right-hand room. After it burst, the man stood up and readied his rifle, carefully approaching the room he’d just fragged.
As he scanned the room, slowly stepping forward, several shots rang out, one of which hit the guy. The red firebomb was clearly in his pocket as he slid down the wall, leaving a streak of red behind.
“Go get that thing,” Prange said. His soldier looked into the room where they had Grossman pinned down and didn’t move. “Go!” Prange said again.
“I’ll deal with it,” Carter said, smacking the kid upside his helmet. He moved down the hallway quietly, quickly, pistol at the ready. When he got close to the dead man with the firebomb in his pocket, he paused, looking at the body, the blood marks on the wall, the doorway he’d have to cross to get to the body. Prange saw his companion nod to himself, a familiar gesture he was used to the man making when he was trying to sort a problem. Carter shifted his footing, then spun, squaring himself in the doorway, pistol aimed into the room and ready to fire.
34
Tom Grossman could see just a sliver of the doorway from his fortified position behind the safe. It was enough to give him information, but not enough for him to take advantage of it. To shoot anybody in the hallway, he’d have to lean out far enough to make himself an easy target.
Age of Survival Series | Book 3 | Age of Revival Page 19