The Storm (30 page)

              Men were moving about frantically while a few were setup in what appeared to be machine gun nests established on the hoods of police cars. One man was behind them, shouting commands. He was white, middle-aged, and bald, but had long hair from the sides and back areas of his head, which still grew it. He wore faded jeans with a flannel shirt and was barking orders to the rest of the lot.

              “You’re dead, pig!” shouted someone near the south group.

              I looked to my left and right at my group of amigos. We were here for revenge, but this could also be a rescue mission as well. At least one of the officers was still in that building, fighting back, and the people before us weren’t happy about it. As gunfire continued to plaster the south face of the police station, I saw two guys run forward, each with a bottle of booze in hand. As they got near the building, they lit a rag that came from it and then launched it at a nearby opening. One exploded into flames against the brick wall, but the second crashed into the second floor through the now missing and shattered window.

              Within moments, smoke started coming out. With all their gunfire and everything happening before me, I visualized a second floor with turned over desks and papers lying about. That Molotov cocktail might as well have been a dozen grenades. Without a fire suppression system and sprinklers, an inferno in that environment could go viral and take down the whole building. The gunfire stopped for a moment as they all cheered their flames. They were waiting anxiously to see if it would burn.

              The battlefield was strangely quiet for a few moments as they watched the edge of the flames dance out of the second floor window. A loud “
COOOHHH
” sound came forth and was immediately recognizable as a fire extinguisher fulfilling its created purpose. Whoever was inside had just extinguished the flame.

              The bald man with long hair gestured with a thumbs-up and raised his hand sharply into the air, and everyone started shooting again. It was almost as if they expected that result. Maybe this is how medieval sieges ebbed and flowed. Dozens of failed attempts before one finally succeeded in breaching the enemy’s defenses. It was time for us to do something, if we were going to get into this fight.

              I first rolled left to Rick and then right to Roald. Each time I told them the same thing, “I will whisper to three loud enough for us to hear, and we can take out the guys to the north first. We will fire on three. There are five guys up there and five of us. Take the one in order of where you are on this line. After that, we will count to three again and fire at anyone to the south, starting with the machine gun guys. After that, give ’em hell.”

              It seemed sensible to me, but a dread suddenly overpowered me. Once that trigger is pulled, Josh, there is no going back. Battle is easily joined, but not as easily won or terminated. Each of us took up our positions with barrels poking through the lower edge of the bushes. If anyone was looking, they may have seen us now, but all attention and gunfire was back to the police station.

              The men to the north stood behind the overturned, thick, wooden picnic tables, but their shield only covered the first four feet. Each of them had their chest and heads exposed and weren’t moving. A couple were smoking as the rest were observing the police station looking for any signs of escape or movement. Their role was mostly passive, and they were waiting for something to pull them into the action. Little did they know they were dead men, and the pale horse was already charging their position. He wouldn’t miss them the same way he missed me.

              We each lined up our sights. I targeted a guy in the middle that could have been Hispanic or Middle Eastern. He had olive skin, thin, streaky, dark hair, and was probably in his late twenties. He was smoking and focused on the roof. I paid little attention to those around him. He was my target, and I would pull my weight. I had a moment of pause and reflection. I didn’t want to rush my friends. They were probably set as well, but someone rushing to aim and fire wouldn’t help us with a missed shot. I took a long deep inhale and held it. It would be the last peaceful breath I might have for a while.

              “One,” I said quietly. My sights were dead on this guy’s chest. His only movement was to keep puffing his cigarette.

              “Two,” I whispered a bit louder to ensure everyone heard me. He was a hundred yards away, well within range and should go down easily, I thought. Suddenly I was envious as Rick and Roald’s rifles were scoped and this was like shooting fish in a barrel for them. At least all that practice in the hills behind our house as a kid would pay off now.
Good-bye, Mr. Anonymous,
I wryly said to myself.

              “Three!” It came out with some excitement and louder than I wanted, but as soon as I said it, my finger squeezed the trigger.

             
BOOM!

             
The rifle thrust into my shoulder as the bullet exited the barrel with a small smoke cloud behind it. The whole time, I never blinked and kept my eyes squarely on Mr. Anonymous. If I had blinked, I would have missed the bullet smashing through his chest just above the heart and his body flying backwards to land out of sight behind the picnic table.

              Suddenly my field of view widened from just him and his eyes to the whole area around and I realized that each of us had hit our targets dead on. Each of the men behind the picnic table had been shot and killed in a flash that only a lightning bolt could have rivaled in its destructive force and brevity. I wanted to pat myself on the back but remembered the plan. Immediately I edged my body a touch to the left so that I could aim south.

              Amazingly nothing had changed. There was so much gunfire in the air that nobody had taken notice of us yet. The isolated guys to the north of the building were fragged, and their buddies had no idea. I couldn’t believe our luck. Soldiers used to say killing and war was like crack cocaine. For a brief moment, I felt the rush. I worked the lever under the trigger to reload a new bullet into the barrel and could hear the clicking sound of my friends reloading theirs as well.

              We had established clear targets to the north, but left whom we should fire at a bit vague in the south. We knew we should take out the machine gun nests first, and there were three of them, but we hadn’t given any specific instructions. Battle was already joined, and although we hadn’t been detected yet as far as I knew, all that could change in a microsecond and those machine guns could unleash hell on us. Better stick to the plan and get them neutralized. I took aim at the middle one and hoped the guys around me were following the same general logic in choosing their targets.

              “One,” I said in a voice that was above a whisper, carrying a bit of excitement and fear in it.

              “Two,” came out at a steady pace. My target was locked. A young guy, maybe not even twenty-one yet was smiling as he continued to pull the trigger of his machine gun. Bullets continued streaming out endlessly as his grin grew wider. He was enjoying this. Too bad for him.

              “Three!” I pulled the trigger and again my trusty gun let loose on the unsuspecting warrior kid. Immediately his head exploded into a thousand pieces as my bullet ran through it. Also a chunk of the back of his neck shot into the air just life turf flying from a bad golf divot that caught a lot of grass. More than my bullet had ended his life.

              As I cocked the gun quickly, my eyes swept left and right. The other two machine gunners were both hit and either killed or wounded so grievously that death would soon follow. One had fallen behind a car and was out of sight, but the other lay on the ground looking like he was having a seizure. As I gazed closer, I could see a jet of blood pumping out every second from his neck. His struggle was in vain; death had already claimed him today, though he just hasn’t realized it yet.

              I searched for the long-haired bald man in charge of them, but he was already out of sight. As soon as their guys dropped, all of them hit the dirt and started searching for targets. It wouldn’t take them long to see us. My friends were now squeezing the trigger indiscriminately and getting a lot of shots off at the enemy, though few, if any, were connecting.

              There were a lot of glimpses of movement, but they were brief and sudden as people dashed for cover behind various objects. Every time I had a target, I would aim, and it was gone. Quicker than a nanosecond, targets appeared and vanished. I still shot off a couple of rounds in a general direction I thought someone might appear, but I didn’t hit anyone. A loud scream of agony filled the air from south of the building. Apparently one of the machine gunners hadn’t died and was lying there wounded, now crying for help from his buddies.

              Shots now were flying throughout the air toward us and the bushes didn’t seem like such a good place to be. They provided cover well from sight, but from return fire, I might as well just stand up for all the good they did me. In the corner of my eye, I saw another enemy go down. He was running for cover behind a police car parked in front and was five feet short of making it there. He fell face first into the dirt, dead before he hit the ground. One of my allies’ shots had tagged him straight through the middle of his nose. The pale rider was busy indeed today.

              A few stray bullets passed through the bushes above us and knocked twigs with fragments of leaves flying into the air. One small branch landed on my head but it took nothing from my focus. My eyes were hunting for enemies, and my finger was ready to throw death at them as quickly as I could spot them. More rounds started raining down on us, and one hit a couple of feet in front of me, kicking up dirt and blocking my vision.

              All hell was breaking loose, and we weren’t in a good position to weather it. I was about to scream out to everyone to retreat when I heard the bald man beat me to it. The same voice I had caught snippets of suddenly could be heard clearly throughout the air. “Fallback, boys! Move your asses back to fallback position one!” He was loud and sure of himself. I suddenly realized he was being so loud because he was trying to ensure the now dead people north of the police station could hear him. He still hadn’t realized they were dead before we had even engaged him.

              “Position one?” I heard Roald ask aloud to nobody in particular with a bit of confusion.

              I couldn’t even look at him or anywhere other than the enemy. There were glimpses of them withdrawing. They left their dead but were moving out as stealthily as they had taken cover from our shots. Victory belonged to us . . . for now.

              “Be seeing you guys soon!” shouted one voice.

              “I got your boy hanging!” screamed another.

              “You all are dead men soon!” The last voice was that of the bald man.

              We waited several anxious minutes, everyone quiet and afraid that to make a sound or speak would invite another barrage of gunfire. After a few minutes that seemed like an eternity, Miller partially stood up and looked around above the bushes for the first time. No shots came at him and then he arose to his feet and stood tall. Rapidly he dropped the clip from his AK-47 and reloaded in a smooth motion that would have made any drill instructor proud. He hopped the bushes, and that was an indicator for the rest of us to get up as well. “Move out, guys,” I said in a normal loud voice.

              The back of my brain told me I should be trembling after an encounter like this. If a bank ever experiences an armed robbery, they give the managers and employees immense counseling. It’s commonplace for people to have an emotional breakdown and leave banking or develop small psychological issues that take time to heal after a gun has been put in their face. I’ve seen fellow managers totally break down over the years. I knew I should be shaken up a bit, but my nerves were steady.
Maybe this is how soldiers feel in wars too,
I thought. No time for rattled nerves with the enemy close, bottle it all up and let it fly when you get back home.

              “Rick, Roald, stay here and cover us if we need it to escape. Nana, see if you can get on one of those machine gun nests and flip it around in their direction. Miller and I will go inside.” I was decisive.

              Miller and I approached the front door standing next to the entrance. “Friendlies!” he shouted out. “I repeat, we are friendlies!” As he exclaimed it aloud, I stood off to the side and was aghast at what I saw. The front of the building was marked with bullet holes with every piece of glass shattered and lying in fragments around the ground. Ahead of me, there was human gore and flesh lying in small chunks with human hair still protruding forth. A couple of dead bodies were in view, fresh blood still draining out onto the pavement and flowing into a small stream.

              A voice responded from inside, “Come on in.”

              Miller poked his head around the side and looked quickly then turned and entered. As he did so, I noticed Nana kicking a dead body to the side with his foot and trying to figure out how to load and takeover what I can only describe as a big machine gun. “You okay, man?” Miller asked out loud.

              I rounded the corner too and immediately recognized the officer. It was Alex Hampisch. He had aged ten years since the storm and didn’t have the same youthful vibrancy emanating from his face. He also was covered in blood and was sitting with his back against the wall with legs spread out in front of him. A black shotgun lay across his legs and a revolver pistol was off to the side. He gave Miller a blank stare but smiled when he saw me.