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

As the bullets zinged off flagstones to his right, Vince let his professional calmness settle over him, and he aimed carefully — and blew a trench through the middle of Dusty’s forehead.

Dusty went to his knees, twitched, and fell on his face.

Vince stood there a few seconds, getting his breath, his pulse hammering in his ears.

Then he heard a creak, a noise from the room on the other side of the window, turned to see Gustafson raising a Glock to fire at him through the window. Vince spun and threw himself at the foot of the porch, the Glock cracking as he went.

He hit the ground hard and gasped for air as he got to his feet. He rushed up the steps to the wall beside the door, holstering the Desert Eagle and unsheathing the knife.

“You Judas to all that is holy!” Gustafson bellowed, rushing up to the door and firing through. The General had the wrong idea of where Vince was.

Knife in hand, Vince edged closer to the doorframe. He looked down and saw a large shard of glass from the door lying on the deck. He reached, picked it up, and tossed it toward the big shrub close to the stone walkway, from the porch steps.

The glass tinkled there, and Gustafson thrust his arm through the door’s broken window, extending the Glock to fire at the shrub.

Vince swung the knife hard and fast so the blade pierced to the hilt through Gustafson’s extended arm, cutting between the radius and ulna. The General screamed as blood spurted from his arm and Vince twisted the knife so that Gustafson would lose control of his hand.

The gun fell from his twitching fingers.

Vince withdrew the knife and Gustafson wrenched his arm back into the house. Vince used the toe of his boot to pull the gun toward him — he wasn’t sure that Gustafson didn’t have a second gun. He wiped the combat knife on his belt and sheathed it, picked up the Glock, hearing Gustafson’s retreating footsteps. No time to load the Desert Eagle.

Stepping to the door, Vince saw Gustafson running crookedly past Chaz Prosser’s body. He was heading toward a doorway, clutching his arm and sobbing.

Vince opened the door and stepped through, striding after Gustafson.

“Herr Professor!” Vince yelled. “Where you going? You wanted firepower — I got some for you! Come on back and take down the Judas!”

Vince got to the doorway, saw Gustafson running through a sort of parlor and through another door.

Vince followed and saw Gustafson running out onto the front porch. Raoul Gustafson stumbled on the stairs and fell on the ground between the porch and the burning Humvee, yelling with pain as he hit his wounded arm on the ground. He writhed about, cursing, then got awkwardly to his feet and started past the car, coughing from the smoke. He walked past the body of Gunny Hansen, not even glancing down.

“Herr Oberstgeneral!” Vince shouted in his freshman German.

“Achtung! Stop or I’ll shoot you in der hintern!”

The General staggered onward.

Vince followed him out to the driveway and then fired the Glock in the ground between Gustafson’s feet.

Swaying, the General stopped in mid-stride. Then he turned to Vince, composing his face for dignity, raising his chin. “I officially surrender to you!” he said. The light from the burning car played on his face, red as hell-flames.

“Do you really?” Vince said, stopping about ten feet away.

“You must take me prisoner,” Gustafson said. “And turn me over to the authorities! You are a professional soldier. You are a man of conscience. You cannot shoot down an unarmed man.”

“I can’t?”

“Certainly not.”

Vince chuckled. “Herr General — if the people your thugs murdered at the Lincoln Memorial had put up their arms and asked to surrender, what would have happened to them? Would your men have spared them?” He shook his head. “You know, one of the dead was a minister with four children. He was a veteran. Another one was a young woman right out of medical school. She was going to be an oncologist. She’s dead now. And you tortured a friend of mine. And you’re telling me I have to let you live? Fuck you. Raoul Gustafson, I sentence you to death for treason against the United States of America.” He aimed the gun at Gustafson’s belly.

Gustafson’s eyes widened. “No — you’re a civilized man!”

“I’ll do this much for you,” said Vince. “I’ll give you this guy! And you can then — be armed.”

“What?” Gustafson blinked at him, frowning, as if he hadn’t heard right.

Vince took two long steps forward — and then tossed the Glock pistol at Gustafson’s feet. “Go on, Raoul. It’s loaded. Pick it up.”

Gustafson stared — and then sneered. “Truly — you slaves of the Jews are imbeciles!”

He reached down, scooped up the gun…as Vince unsheathed his combat knife, stepped in close — intimately close — and stabbed it expertly between two ribs over Raoul Gustafson’s heart.

The Glock fired as Gustafson convulsively squeezed the trigger, the bullet smacking into the gravel behind Vince…

Whimpering, Gustafson stared into Vince’s eyes.

“Gustafson,” Vince said, “you’re about to find out that Hell is real.”

The leader of the Germanic Brethren slumped, his eyes glazing over.

Vince let him drop, tugging the knife free. He wiped the blade on the dead man’s body and sheathed it. He stepped over the body and kept walking, heading down the driveway to Greenville Road. Dutch was waiting for him in his truck, down at a turn-out on the highway.

Vince kept walking, emotionally drained, shaking a little as a light, cooling rain began to fall.

Then he saw headlights coming…

He stepped off the road and hid in the brush. A motorcade of federal cars arrived — and drove right past him. They hadn’t seen him, it seemed. There was a