Firepower, John Cutter [best summer reads .txt] 📗

“You guys were talking cell to cell?” Vince asked.

“Before they hung me up.” She checked the gun over, nodded to herself, and said, “You send that email for me?”

“I did. No response last time I checked. I tried to get in touch with the FBI on the phone. Couldn’t get anyone to really listen. Just receptionists and voicemail.”

“Gustafson says he’s got people in the Justice Department…”

“Yeah, I figured. Also he’s pally with Sheriff Woodbridge.”

“How are we getting out of here?”

“First we’re stopping at the armory. See if I can get it open. Then… we’re going up to the heli.”

“How’d you get into the base? They’ve been watching for you.”

“I climbed up the east side and took out the emplacements. We should head up to the heli. You think you can still pilot a chopper — even with your arms swollen?”

“I think so.” She was pale, her face taut from the pain in her shoulders. But she seemed grimly determined.

Vince nodded and said, “Bobby — pistol or shotgun?”

“I’m not that good a shot.”

“Shotgun it is. Come on. Everyone stay quiet as possible.”

Vince led the way to the stairs, leaned through the stairwell door just enough to look up, and saw no one up above. They started slowly up the stairs. He got to the first-floor landing, paused, looked both ways down the hall. Still no one.

“Bellator!” This time Gustafson’s voice was louder, coming through a bullhorn. “Come on out! We’re not waiting any longer!”

Vince turned to the others and said in a low voice, “Bobby — you take that shotgun against the wall there. Deirdre — I was told the armory combination is something to do with Kristallnacht. That sound right to you?”

“I haven’t heard hint-one about the code for that door. Nothing.”

“Okay — if you two can watch the front door, and just discourage anyone trying to come in, I’m going to try to get into that armory. I’ve got some thoughts about covering our exfil.”

Deirdre nodded. There was a dark glitter in her eyes.

I wouldn’t like to be the Brethren who tries to cross her now, Vince thought.

He watched them move close enough to the door that they could see out. Then he sprinted past the doorway and back through the open space under the airshaft, toward the reinforced steel door of the armory. Someone fired through the front door at him. Then he was at the armory door, which was out of the line of fire from the front. He heard the boom of a shotgun and the crack of the Glock as Bobby and Deirdre engaged in suppressive fire to keep the Brethren from coming through the front door.

He tried the dates of Kristallnacht on the door’s entry keyboard. He tapped in:

9101138

A little red light came on under the keyboard. Wrong passkey. A spate of gunshots came through the front door, cracking into the concrete to his left. One of them ricocheted close by.

Vince tried the first day of Kristallnacht only, along with the month and year. He tapped in:

91138

The little light turned green and the door clicked ajar. A light switched on inside.

He grinned, swung the heavy steel door wide and rushed into the armory. The room was like an extra-large bank vault, but instead of money, the racks and shelves on the walls were chockablock with ordnance. There were several light machine guns, four FN-SCAR rifles, two old-school collector’s item Tommy guns with the drums on them, a rack of Mossberg 500 tactical shotguns, a row of Uzis, and several boxes of grenades, including flashbangs. On the opposite wall was a rack of AK47s and another of AR-15s. On the floor below them was a mortar with a box of shells and… an RPG launcher with four rocket grenades.

There were also rows of green-steel ammo boxes.

The ATF would have a field day in here, he thought.

Vince selected two frag grenades, two flashbangs, a loaded Tommy gun — and the RPG launcher.

He heard another exchange of gunfire out front and wondered if he had made the right tactical choices. Suppose after all she’d been through, Deirdre got killed there on the first floor? Maybe they should have run for the heli first thing. But Vince wanted to drive the militia back as far as possible from the base before taking the heli. He put the hand grenades and flashbangs in his pockets, carried the launcher out under one arm, the Tommy gun under the other, set them against the inner wall of the airshaft, just out of line of sight of the Brethren, and ran back for the rocket grenades. He ran into the armory and scooped the rocket grenades up in both arms.

Keeping under cover of the out-jutting wall of the air shaft, Vince returned to the launcher, bullets screaming past the wall on his right, to smack into the concrete beside the door of the armory. He crouched to load the RPG, then stood up, yelled, “Deirdre, Bobby — what’s your sitrep?”

“We’re okay,” she shouted. “They’re staying back.”

“Pull back to the stairs to the roof!”

“Copy that!”

He heard them moving back, then he stepped out into the open, aimed the RPG launcher through the open doorway toward the small guard tower on the inner wall of the compound, and fired. The rocket grenade made a whumpf and hissed on its way as Vince stepped back. Though he’d been exposed for only a second, a fusillade of shots smacked into the back wall of the airshaft — then there was a thud of RPG impact, bringing the clattering of metal fragments from the guard tower; shrapnel striking vehicles and outbuildings… and at least one man. Someone screamed piteously.

Vince scooped up the Tommy gun, exposed his right side just enough to fire it from his hip, and sprayed the entire