Against All Enemies (36 page)

“I’m not talking to you anymore,” Tommy said.

“I bet you’re wrong,” Boxers said.

“Not now,” Jonathan said. The kid didn’t need to feel any more threatened than he already—

The sound of vehicles racing up and stopping abruptly outside drew Jonathan’s attention. Rollins, who’d never left the window, said, “We’ve got company, people.”

Jonathan darted to the window and as he saw the rest of his team coming to join him, he pointed to Jolaine. “She Devil, you keep an eye on Tommy.”

Outside, two SUVs that looked remarkably like the one Tommy had driven pulled to a stop in the middle of the street and disgorged four people each for a total of eight. They all carried some form of AR-15 variant, and they headed as a group toward the door of the diner downstairs.

“Shit,” Jonathan spat. “We’re in trouble. Mary, is there a back door from here?” He drew his Colt. Suddenly, eight rounds plus a spare magazine didn’t feel like nearly enough.

“Only downstairs,” she said.

The very downstairs where the armed posse was swarming.

“Fire escape?” Jonathan asked. Surely even a burg like this had fire codes.

Mary pointed to a room in the back. “The window,” she said.

The whole building shook as the invaders slammed the door open and entered the diner.

“She Devil, you take Tommy and head to the fire escape. Boomer, you and Madman are next. Big Guy and I will hold them off and join you.”

“I’m up here!” Tommy yelled. “They’ve got guns! They’re going out the fire escape!”

Rollins was closest, and he punched the kid in the head. The force of the blow should have knocked him out, but instead, it seemed to energize him. Tommy leapt from his chair and charged Rollins, knocking him off-balance. In a move that Jonathan found impressive, the kid grabbed Rollins’s gun hand with both of his own and twisted the pistol free.

“Don’t!” Jonathan yelled.

Tommy had the M9 in his hand, but he fumbled with the trigger.

“Tommy!” Mary yelled.

Outside, the pace of motion on the steps peaked. The entire second floor seemed to vibrate.

Tommy’s grip settled on the pistol and he swung it toward Rollins.

Jonathan shot the boy through the temple from a range of five feet. Through the pink mist of bone and brain, he saw a lamp shatter from the bullet that passed all the way through.

Mary screamed, lunged at Jonathan.

Jonathan swatted her away and pushed her to the floor. He kept her there with his knee planted between her shoulder blades as the apartment door flew open from a massive kick that actually cracked the length of the door panel.

Jonathan saw a rifle poised to fire and he shot the face behind it. And the face behind that one. To his right and rear, Boxers didn’t have an angle on the door itself so he fired through the wall adjacent to the opening. More people fell.

With his weapon up and ready, Jonathan rushed the door, emptying his remaining five rounds blindly through the opening. As the slide locked, he thumbed the mag release and dropped the empty from the grip. By the time it hit the carpet, he’d seated the spare mag and slammed the first of seven fresh bullets into battery.

As he passed through the doorway into the hall, he didn’t even try to step around the first two bodies, but rather walked on them, on their torsos, for the best balance in an inherently unbalanced stance. He encountered two more bodies in the hallway itself, one clearly dead of a head wound, and the other writhing from a gut wound and a neck wound that pumped blood at an unsustainable rate. Apparently the vest he wore was not ballistic after all. Jonathan lifted the man’s rifle away and pulled two of his spare mags out of their pouches. He racked the bolt to make sure a round was chambered, and he double-checked the safety to make sure it was off. He noted that this was a civilian model of the AR-15, with no full-auto mode. He slung the rifle over his shoulder and stuffed the mags into his back pockets.

“Call an ambulance,” the wounded man moaned.

“Where are the others?” Jonathan asked.

“Oh, man, I’m hurt. Please, get me an ambulance.”

“You’re not hurt, you’re dying,” Jonathan said. “Where are your friends?”

The light in the man’s eyes dimmed and then went out. Jonathan felt a tug. Killing people was never easy, always took a piece of you away, but watching them die carved a bigger chunk.

“Did I get him or did you?” Boxers asked. Sometimes, Big Guy just pushed too hard.

Gunshots cracked in the night outside, at first just a single shot, and then a sustained exchange. Jonathan heard pistols and rifles, and knew right away that they’d found the dead men’s friends.

“Scorpion! Scorpion! We’re under fire. Black side off the red corner.”

“Arm up,” Jonathan said, but Boxers had already slung two of the rifles. Rollins, meanwhile, stood in the doorway watching. He seemed stunned. “Madman!” Jonathan barked.

“Leave him,” Boxers said.

Yep. Jonathan switched his radio to VOX. “Scorpion and Big Guy are on the way,” he said.

Dylan’s voice said, “Expedite. She Devil’s out of ammo, and I nearly am. If you button-hook to the red side, you should be able to flank them.”

At the base of the interior stairs now, Jonathan charged forward toward the diner’s front door. “Are you and She Devil under cover?”

“Affirm. Behind a Dumpster in the back.”

“Stay there and stay down. We’re coming into position.” It troubled him that the shooting had subsided. Typically, that meant the enemy was making a move. “If you see a shadow up close, shoot it. It will not be a good guy.”

Jonathan led with the rifle pressed into his shoulder, walking at a low crouch, fully aware that Boxers was two steps behind in the same posture. As he stepped through the door into the night, he swept left and right and found no threats.

“Come out from hiding!” someone yelled. “We see you behind that container. Your friends are dead upstairs. You cannot get away.”

“I don’t feel dead,” Boxers whispered on the air. “Do you feel dead? You don’t look dead.”

Jonathan ignored him. Boxer got positively jolly during gun battles, and this one clearly was not over yet. In the distance, he heard an approaching siren.

As they turned the corner to the left, his heart rate increased. The four bad guys had fanned out in a ragged line that ran perpendicular to his position, and they seemed to move with fair precision as they approached the Dumpster. Even in the dark, Jonathan could see the bullet punctures in the steel.

“You take the two on the right,” Jonathan whispered into his live mike. There would be no warning, no challenge.

Before Big Guy could acknowledge, gunfire erupted from the second floor of the diner—from Mary’s apartment. Enormous muzzle flashes strobed from the window. Eight, maybe ten rounds in rapid succession.

Jonathan dropped to his knee and swiveled to confront the threat.

“That was me,” Madman said over the air. “Check them, but I think I got them all.”

Jonathan broke his aim on the window and pivoted back to the soldiers in the alley. None moved, all glistened. He and Boxers approached the sprawled bodies cautiously but deliberately.

“Just when I think I understand Stanley, he goes and surprises me all over again,” Boxers grumbled.

It took less than twenty seconds to determine that they were all dead. “We’re clear,” Jonathan said on the air. “Four sleeping inside, four in the alley.” The sound of the siren grew louder.

Dylan and Jolaine stepped out from behind the Dumpster. “That siren is the police,” Jolaine said. “We need to get out of here.”

Jonathan turned and craned his neck toward the sound of the approaching emergency vehicle. He could see blue lights painting the facades of buildings at the end of the street. “Nope,” he said. “No time. Drop all firearms that don’t belong to you and gather on me.”

“Hope you know what you’re doin’, Boss,” Boxers said softly.

“Remember,” Jonathan said. He was still on VOX. “We don’t kill cops.”

“You remember that I do not go to jail,” Boxers replied.

Rollins cleared the front door of the diner at about the same moment that Dylan and Jolaine sidled up. Jonathan switched his radio back to PTT.

“What’s the plan?” Rollins asked.

“We’re gonna talk,” Jonathan said.

“Come again?” Jolaine said.

“Y’all welcome to the team,” Boxers said. “One thing about my friend Scorpion is he always keeps you guessing.”

“What are we waiting for?” Dylan asked.

“For the cop to decide what he wants to do.” The vehicle had stopped short of the diner, and now had turned its lights off.

“I think he’s a-skeered,” Boxers mocked. “He’s not going to come to us.”

“Okay, then,” Jonathan said. “We’ll go to him.” He looked to the sloppily parked vehicles. “You three take that one,” he said, pointing to one of the SUVs from the raiding party. “Drive down to the Batmobile, grab it, and then drive both vehicles back here.”

“Why?” Rollins asked.

“You know, Madman, I hate the
why
thing at times like this,” Jonathan snapped. “Just do it.”

“What are you two going to do?”

“The talking,” Jonathan said.

Boxers chuckled. “Yeah, because that’s what I’m so good at.”

“When you drive past the cop, he might try to stop you, but don’t stop,” Jonathan instructed. “Don’t threaten him, and don’t ram him, but don’t stop, either. Drive up on the sidewalk if you have to.”

“Oo-uh,” Rollins said. Apparently, some habits were hard to break.

“Boomer, you drive the Batmobile,” Boxers said. “I don’t want Madman’s cooties on the spot where I have to plant my ass.”

“Jesus,” Jonathan muttered.

Big Guy rumbled a laugh.

“Showtime,” Jonathan said. “Let’s go.”

As the other three swarmed out toward the SUV, Jonathan stepped out of the alley into the street and waved to the cop car. The headlights came on, as did a floodlight, which nailed them in the eyes, effectively blinding them.

“Halt,” said a voice over the siren speaker. “Come no closer.”

“Let’s split,” Jonathan said. “You walk down the left sidewalk and I’ll go down the right.”

“Split the target, split the fun,” Big Guy said. “You’re Whiskey Indigo-ing again, aren’t you?”

“I’ll tell you later,” Jonathan said, and they split their course. He was betting on two facts, both of which were pretty sure things. One, that the cop was alone on his patrol, and two, that he was scared fairly shitless. That would make him at once skittish and open to negotiation.

“I’m telling you to stop!” the cop said. With only one floodlight, he had difficulty figuring out who to illuminate. The beam switched from one side to the other.

“We mean you no harm, officer!” Jonathan shouted.

“Stop them!” came a shrill voice from behind. It was Mary. Jonathan could only imagine how much counseling she was going to need. “They’re murderers!”

“I’m not telling you again to stop!” the cop announced.

Jonathan stopped behind a parked Chrysler to up his odds a little for the next part. Behind him, he heard the SUV that contained his team approaching up the street. As he calculated it, they had room to pass by the patrol car, but it would be tight. Jonathan beckoned for the truck to drive up on his edge of the sidewalk, and he pressed up tight against the parked Chrysler to let them pass.

“I’m going to shoot!” the police officer said.

“No, you’re not,” Jonathan shouted. Then he lowered his voice. “Can you hear me if I speak at this volume?”

“Yes,” the cop said into the public address speaker.

“And I can hear you just fine without that,” Jonathan said.

“Stop them!” Mary yelled. “They killed Tommy Piper.”

“I swear to God I will shoot you!” the cop shouted.

“And I swear to God that the survivor will kill you!” Boxers shouted. “Turn off the friggin’ speaker!”

“We mean no harm, Officer,” Jonathan said. He kept his tone modulated to be the essence of reason. “And as much as
I wish my friend would keep his mouth shut!
”—he shouted that part for Boxers to hear—“he raises a good point. Because we mean no harm, and because you cannot shoot two targets at opposite poles at the same time, you should avoid shooting either one.”

“Who are you?” the cop asked. He shouted that time through his open window. Down the length of the street, lights were coming on. Less than three minutes had passed since the end of the gunfight, but it felt like much longer.

“I’m a man with a mission,” Jonathan said.

“He’s a murderer!”

“Excuse me, officer,” Jonathan said. Then he turned to face back toward the diner and shouted, “Mary, please shut up!”

Back to the officer. “I won’t deny that there’s been some unpleasantness here tonight, sir,” he said. “Truth be told, the coroner and undertakers are likely to be working overtime for a while, but I swear to you, sir, that I was not the aggressor. The late Tommy Piper who Mary refers to was in fact about to shoot my friend when I shot him. He chose to work for the bad guys. We, on the other hand, work on the side of the angels.”

“Are you confessing to a crime?”

“No. I’m confessing to a bad night. The rest is up to a jury.”

The cop, who was faceless in the midst of all the bright lights, took his time for the next part. “I need to arrest you,” he said.

“Yeah, well, that’s not going to happen,” Jonathan said. “Not tonight. I’ve got a lot of important things to do, and going to jail isn’t on the list.”

“So you’re resisting arrest,” the cop said.

“No. I’m refusing arrest. Is that a crime?”

A pause. “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t blame you,” Jonathan said. “It’s a confusing situation. And it’s a situation that—and I mean no offense here—you have no control over.” Beyond the police car, at the far end of the street, Jonathan saw approaching headlights. One big vehicle and one bigger vehicle. That had to be the cavalry.

“You can’t just shoot up my town and get away with it,” the cop said.

“I didn’t do that,” Jonathan said. “People tried to shoot up my friends and me, and we shot back. That’s a different proposition.”