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

their weapons aside, desperately trying to escape.

“Go to hell, assholes,” he said, remembering the innocents they’d cut down in the crowd at the memorial. He shouted, “Veer to port, thirty degrees, slight tilt for fire!”

“Roger!”

She turned the heli and he opened fire in short bursts, picking off the fleeing Brethren. Maybe one or two got through alive — more police were arriving to sweep them up.

Vince stopped firing, not wanting to risk hitting the cops. The surviving Brethren dropped their weapons and raised their hands.

And then the chopper flew on over them.

“Exfil!” Vince shouted. “Nothing more we can do here!”

“Glad to hear it!” she yelled. They had picked a landing zone: the southeast corner of Spirit of Justice Park at D Street and New Jersey Avenue, about forty blocks away. Not far in the fast heli. A minute, and they were approaching the park.

“Slowing for landing!” she yelled. The helicopter swung in a circle, slowing, over the park.

Vince held onto the stanchion and waited as Deirdre landed the helicopter at the southeast corner of the park. It was a bumpy landing because it was a hasty one. She had to get the chopper down as quickly as possible.

Then they were down, the engine shut off, the rotors slowing; Deirdre getting out of her seat, removing her helmet.

Vince unhooked the restraining harness and jumped out through the hatch onto the grassy lawn. He saw a security guard yelling at them from some distance off and a few people staring from beside an information kiosk, but no one was close enough to get a good look at him.

He took stock. His ears were ringing from firing the big machine gun, but he didn’t seem to have been hit by the groundfire. He had the little pack on his back, with the Desert Eagle and ammo in it, along with several hand grenades, the flashlight and his knife. He had ditched his phone — he didn’t want to be traced.

Deirdre stepped down beside him. She was breathing hard, looking around at the park as if it were the strangest sight she’d ever seen. “Oh God. That was insane.”

“I saw you were on the radio,” he said. “You told them who you were?”

“Yes. I took an oath. I’ve already broken it helping you, Vince. I can’t keep this up. I’m not going to be a fugitive.”

“Maybe they’ll see you didn’t have much choice because no one was listening to us. We saved a lot of lives today. Hundreds.”

“And we took a lot of lives.”

“No one who didn’t need killing,” Vince said.

“You’ve got to get out of here,” she said. She took his hand and looked into his eyes. “You need to get to the metro.”

He looked at her — and wanted to tell her a lot of things. He wanted to say they might try to see one another, sometime; that this could all blow over and it’d be okay…

But he knew that wasn’t going to happen. He couldn’t risk her.

“Deirdre — thank you. I’m sorry about what you’re going to go through now.”

“Just remember this, Vince. If I’m not under arrest, in ten days I’ll be at Pomander Park, on the Potomac, in Alexandria. At noon.”

This offer to meet surprised Vince. He’d been resigned to never seeing Deirdre again. “Okay. I’ll be there if I can.”

She nodded. “Maybe I’ll have that information about Angel Lopez. You know, I can’t guarantee I won’t tell the Bureau who was with me in this heli. It depends on if they put me under oath.”

“They probably will. They’ll want to know who the vigilante is. And anyway — there are a lot of surviving Brethren from up at Wolf Base who know who I am. They’ll tell them. They’ll tell some lies, too, of course. But — don’t hold back. No point in it.” He noticed the security guard hurrying toward them, one hand on his gun. “Guard’s coming. Gotta go. Good luck, Deirdre.”

He made himself drop her hand and turn away.

Then he jogged off, under the slowly whirling rotors, putting the helicopter between him and the security guard.

Vince got to the street, then turned left and strode quickly off. The Capitol South Metro Station was close by. He couldn’t stay and explain himself to the authorities. He had more business to take care of with the Brethren. If he left it to the FBI, by the time they got organized to do something about it, chances were, Gustafson would escape. And even if the feds did get there on time, they’d arrest Gustafson, instead of killing him. He might be able to deny his connection to the attack — he’d likely covered his tracks pretty well. They might not take him into custody. So “the General” would escape.

Remembering the people struck dead by militia bullets at the memorial, right under the calm, marble-carven eyes of Abraham Lincoln, Vince simply could not allow Gustafson to escape punishment.

In a few minutes he was striding quickly along a passenger boarding dock of the subway. He had paid his metro fare as sirens from emergency vehicles roared by, and people around him asked one another what was going on. A woman said something about seeing a helicopter landing in the park, right over there…

Now, Vince stepped through the doors of the train and sat down, keeping himself looking serene as possible. He half expected the train to be stopped and searched by the police. But it pulled out of the station and rushed through the tunnels.

He had chaos on his side: the Brethren’s attack on the memorial, the carnage left by the rogue machine-gunner on the heli, the strange helicopter landing in the park, Chang dealing with finding Shaun Adler, and a host of cops and Homeland Security arrayed around the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs, thanks