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

the other three men shrieked as the shrapnel sliced through them. The explosion blew out the back tires of the Humvee and started a fire on its oily underside…

Vince was already drawing his Desert Eagle and — not wanting to be framed against the driveway — he forced his way through the brush to the left of the door. Branches stung his cheeks; thorns raked his knuckles. Then he was through, onto the lawn — just as the window to the left of the door shattered. An assault rifle burst, fired through the window, sliced by on his right — the shooter’s eyesight was still somewhat compromised or Vince might well be dying right now.

Vince dodged right, sprinting hard to put the Humvee between himself and the house. He saw three men sprawled on the ground, two quite motionless, the third — Gunny Hansen--trying to crawl away. Probably dying.

The flames were licking up the heavy vehicle’s chassis now, and smoke was billowing. Good cover. But the damn thing might blow up in his face in a second.

He kept running, bullets cracking behind him, toward the corner of the house. He saw a face in a window on the right side of the door and fired the Desert Eagle at it. The face vanished.

Did he hit the guy? Unlikely.

He got to the corner of the house, decided that outnumbered, he couldn’t creep slowly along — they’d use the time to catch him between them.

So he kept sprinting, jumping over a garden bench, then a short hedge, coming around to the back yard. A landscaped garden stretched between him and a broad wooden porch that looked out on a small valley behind the house. Beyond the valley a slope rose up to join a steep wooded hill.

There were lounge chairs on the porch. On his left was a long window and he was relieved to see the curtains closed. He ducked under it, moved as quickly forward as he could in that awkward hunched-over position, past the windows. He straightened up just as a burly man stepped onto the porch, rifle in hand. The gunman had a buzzcut. Henry.

He and Vince saw one another at the same moment, but Vince’s pistol was already leveled, while Henry’s rifle wasn’t raised to firing position yet. Vince had gotten here faster than Henry had expected — but Henry was wearing a Kevlar Vest.

Vince didn’t let that stop him from firing at Henry’s center-mass. The Desert Eagle boomed and the heavy .50 round knocked the militiaman off his feet. Vince doubted the bullet had penetrated the armor but now, crouching down again, Vince could see Henry sprawled under the middle railing of the porch. There was a space under the plank and the deck, and there was Henry, groaning, getting up to a sitting position, firing sloppily. The rifle bullets tore through the middle plank and cracked over Vince’s head.

Vince was aiming right between Henry’s outstretched legs. “Sorry, Henry,” he said, as he squeezed the trigger.

Henry screamed as the .50 smashed into his groin, the powerful bullet wreaking havoc, shattering not only genitals but arteries and major veins.

Vince threw himself down as Henry, shrieking curses, chewed up the railing with the rest of his clip.

There was a click as the rifle came up empty and a sob from Henry as Vince stood up, took careful aim, and shot Henry through the head.

Taking a deep breath, Vince rushed to the wall between the window and the porch — as he expected, the window shattered as bullets sprayed through it. Broken glass flew past. The gunfire had brought Henry some back-up.

Vince had four rounds left in the pistol and not enough time to reload — not with two experienced soldiers hunting him. He clambered quickly over the porch railing and flattened against the wall.

Where would Chaz and Dusty go now? Probably one would be trying to keep his attention while the other flanked him.

Heart banging away, Vince looked to his right, back at the northern corner of the house. No one visible yet. He heard footsteps inside, someone moving from the window to the door onto the porch. The window on his right was broken, its curtain tattered. He leaned out a little, glanced through it. Saw no one.

Vince took the second flashbang from his belt, pulled the pin, and tossed it through the break in the window. The noise of its falling might make the shooter by the door look toward it.

Crack-whuff, the peripheral burst of light, and a man shouted, “Bloody Hell!” Chaz.

Vince turned toward the door — bullets smashed the glass of the big window beside the porch as Chaz, blinded but trying to keep Vince at bay, fired his rifle. Vince rushed to the door and fired through its broken window at the Brit. Chaz’s head jerked and he staggered back.

Vince didn’t see him fall because he had to throw himself to the left as bullets from the corner of the house cut past him. Vince hit the deck hard, rolled, got to one knee with the stone porch pillar between him and Dusty.

Luckily for Vince, Dusty Folkson was Blackwater-trained; just private “army”, not as professional as the other two, and not as good a shot.

Vince heard the man’s running feet — he was sprinting toward the porch, counting on the porch pillar to cover him.

He’ll have his gun tilted toward the house, Vince thought, thinking of me being likely to shoot at him from up on the porch.

So Vince got up and jumped off the porch, turning in the air, landing and awkwardly trying to aim as Dusty got up on his feet. Vince fired, twice. And both times, firing off balance — he missed.

Dusty turned, spraying with the AR-15 burst setting as he came, and Vince had only one bullet left in the Desert Eagle.