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

drum of .45 rounds at the courtyard of the compound, toward every spot where a man could be taking cover.

Someone cursed. Glass shattered; metal resounded with bullet impacts.

He stepped back, getting a glimpse of muzzle flashes to the north of one of the outbuildings. He tossed the empty Tommy gun aside, loaded another rocket grenade into the RPG and stepped out to fire it at the muzzle flashes.

Someone shouted, “RPG!”

The grenade whooshed, then it struck the corner of the steel building near a group of shooters. A man shrieked, and another, as more shrapnel zinged through the compound.

Vince loaded another RPG round, then heard a truck engine revving. He glanced around the edge of the wall at the compound to see a big four-wheel-drive pickup roaring right at him. Several Brethren were standing in the back, firing Glocks.

He swung the RPG out, braced; bullets sizzled past his head as he fired. He stepped quickly back undercover without seeing the rocket strike home.

But the rocket grenade struck the truck in the center of its grill, stopping it about fifty feet away. When he looked again, he saw an expanding ball of fire, and pieces of truck and humanity flying. Smoke and chaos from the exploded, crumpled truck, so close to the doorway, gave Vince the cover he had hoped for. He reloaded the RPG then bolted from his position, running to the stairs.

“Come on!” he shouted at Deirdre and Bobby. Carrying the launcher, he started up the stairs. They came after him, and the three of them ran up the metal stairway, flight after flight.

But partway they had to slow at bodies Vince had left, blood still pattering down the stairs, so they could step over the corpses, and parts of corpses.

Deirdre glanced down a hallway at the next floor and said, “More of ’em! How many you kill, Vince? Jesus!”

“Let’s keep moving!” he said, leading the way.

They kept on, gasping for air by the time they reached the top floor of the bunker complex.

“Up this ladder,” Vince said, breathing hard. “Oh, wait — Deirdre, can you climb with your arms all kind of…”

“Yeah, I can climb. It’ll hurt. But so what.” She started up the ladder, grimacing with pain, and climbed through the trap door.

Vince heard shouts from the stairway below. Unintelligible but urgent. “Go on, Bobby.”

Bobby Destry put the shotgun’s strap over his shoulder, climbed up and through.

“Pull the RPG up after you!” Vince called. He handed the loaded launcher up through the trap door and then looked down the stairwell and saw a flight and a half down. A bullet cracked up the stairwell and hit the concrete ceiling above Vince. He stepped back, selected a frag grenade from his pockets, pulled the pin and tossed it down the stairs. Men shouted and ran back down.

He returned to the ladder and stared up, hearing the explosion and the metallic clattering of grenade shrapnel from the stairs.

Suppose the heli isn’t fueled up? Vince wondered as he climbed through the hatch, locking it down behind him. But it had to be fueled with Operation Firepower about to happen. Didn’t it?

“Help me uncover the helicopter, Bobby,” Vince said. “Bring that RPG, leave it by the heli door.” The three of them ran to the heli.

As Vince unsheathed his knife, he could hear more shouting from down in the compound and a distorted voice on a bullhorn. “Surrender… we will… forced…”

Vince smiled. They had no notion he was taking the helicopter.

He cut the lines holding the camouflage netting and they pulled it off the rotors and fuselage. The rotors were folded down, so nothing got caught, and the heli was soon free. Deirdre climbed the metal roll-up stairs to the hatch. “The damn thing is locked,” she said.

Vince went up the short flight of steps to the hatch beside her and dug in his pockets. “Hold on, maybe one of these keys…” He tried Marco’s keys — the third one opened the hatch. “I think the other one here’ll start it…” He handed her the keys, tugged the hatch out of the way, and Deirdre went in — stopping just inside the door to stare at the big M134 minigun. It was pulled back on a rail welded into the deck, and locked in place. “What the hell!”

“Yeah,” Vince said. “They had some plans for that thing. Better get us in the air.”

She went to the pilot’s seat and put on the helmet with its headset and earphones. Bobby took a seat beside her as Vince brought the RPG in.

The engine roared to life. “How’s the fuel?” Vince called.

“Full tank!” Deirdre said, unlocking the rotors.

The rotor blades unfolded and turned, faster and faster, whipping around, raising dust around the heli. Vince remained standing beside the open hatch; he held the loaded RPG in one hand, holding onto a stanchion with the other.

The heli lifted up, a little crookedly, but about fifty feet up.

“Corlin! Take it out over the emplacements and soon as I fire, head east!”

She veered the chopper out over the near edge of the compound where Vince could see a group of men just outside the gate standing by an SUV. Beyond them, a Humvee was driving away from the compound. It was out of range. But firing downward, he had a pretty good chance of hitting that SUV.

He triggered the RPG launcher, there came the whumpf and hiss, and the rocket grenade sped down, straight for the SUV. He could see men running — and then the rocket struck the vehicle in the center of its roof. It was hidden by the explosion.

Deirdre was already accelerating to the east and angling up. Vince tossed the RPG out the door, reached out — with a good grip on the stanchion — and pulled the hatch shut.