Novel Chapters Three and Four

This week has the second installment of my experiment, which still requires a title. If you have not had a chance yet, check out chapters one and two here. I hope you enjoy this week’s installment! Please provide critiques in the comments, as I would love to improve the entertainment value of the story for the reader.

CHAPTER THREE

Tommy and Will hustled as quickly as they could toward the sound of the gun fire. As they grew nearer, they could tell that the fighting was coming from the Sheriff’s office. Taking heavy, painful breaths in the bitter air, Tommy and Will stopped a half block down from the sheriff’s office.

A heavy stone building, the sheriff’s office only had two entrances and exits: the front door, or the garage. Tommy and Will were standing behind a thick maple tree, as Tommy took stock of his surroundings.

The garage door was closed, which was a good sign. It was apparent that a lot of cars had been shot up in the parking lot next to the garage door. Tommy shivered in the cold as he looked towards the front of the building. He could see the remaining gunmen taking cover behind the newly installed bollards in front of the Sheriff’s office front door. Ms. Jorgenson’s van was smashed against one of the furthest bollards.

Tommy counted seven gunmen still in the fight, with four laying in pools of freezing blood on the sidewalk leading up to the office building. He could hear sirens approaching, but he couldn’t tell if it was more police, more medics, or a combination of both. Ducking back behind the tree, he addressed a clearly shell-shocked Will.

“Alright Will, here’s the deal, I count seven of these fuckers still up and breathing. You take the far side of the street, and I will take this side. Lay down and start shooting at the furthest one down the street and work your rounds back this way. Don’t get any closer to them unless you have to. If you run out of ammo in your rifle, just drop it and use your pistol. Hopefully we can divert their attention long enough for the guys inside to make a few good hits.”

Will stared at him, and nodded. “And don’t forget about the body armor. Headshots if you can.” Tommy grabbed Will’s shoulders and locked eyes with him, “Let’s do this.”

Pushing out from the tree, Tommy and Will started sprinting towards their designated areas. Lining up his sights on the closest gunman, Tommy waited for Will to get across the street before squeezing the trigger.

Tommy’s first shot dropped the gunman. Will was nowhere near as disciplined, standing fully upright, firing wildly in the general direction of the gunmen. His magazine was empty within seconds, and as he threw his rifle down, the remaining six gunmen turned to fire on him. Tommy saw the first couple of rounds blow through Will, spraying blood all over the snow on the ground. An ugly, guttural noise screamed from Will’s throat as he tried to draw his pistol from the pilfered gun belt.

Tommy watched through his sights as he frantically tried to hit more of the gunmen before they could finish off Will. Striking one under the arm and side of the head, and another in the chest plate, five of the gunmen all still managed to get their rifles trained on Will. Tommy felt his rifle go empty, drew his pistol and stood up to rush the gunmen. As he watched Will get struck by bullets from the five remaining gunmen, he was vaguely aware of more rifle fire coming from the Sheriff’s office. He empty the first magazine from his pistol without really aiming, causing the gunmen to turn his direction and return fire.

Tommy dove behind the first bollard as the rifle shots cracked and hissed above his head, the sharp popping sound as they smacked into the bollard in front of him. Reloading his pistol, he saw the first of the Sheriff’s deputy cars pull in at the end of the street. As the flashing lights and sirens caught the attention of the gunmen, Tommy rose to renew his frantic rush towards them.

The next bollard was only a few feet away, and that was as far as he wanted to go, but as he rose, he saw the closest gunman’s head spew brain matter all over the sidewalk as someone inside the office landed an effective headshot. Seizing the opportunity, Tommy pushed himself as fast as his 65 year old legs to take him, trying to close the distance on the last four gunmen.

The next gunman was crouched facing away from him, unaware of his accomplice’s fate behind him. Tommy lined up the sights of his pistol and fired, but pushed the shot low, and struck the gunman in the rear plate of his body armor. This pushed the gunman forward, and he started to turn. Startled, Tommy emptied the last 12 rounds of his pistol into the gunman, striking him in the head and dumping his brains all over the sidewalk.

Down to three final gunmen, the closest one turned as Tommy tried to take cover behind the closest bollard. A flurry of fully automatic gunfire spit in Tommy’s direction, the bullets blew through Tommy’s thigh, practically blowing his leg off at the knee. Tommy screamed in pain, and struggled to reload his pistol as he dragged himself behind the bollard. He only had two magazines left, and he knew he was losing a lot of blood. Tommy looked down at his leg, saw the mangled mass of flesh and bone being held on by a loose flap of skin and started to become nauseous.

Fighting down the urge to puke, Tommy stuck his pistol around the bollard and emptied his magazine blindly. There was nothing more he could do. He was starting to black out as he inserted his last magazine into the pistol. As his vision blurred, he became vaguely aware of three shapes running across the street. He fought to bring his vision back into focus, and recognized the three gunmen. Raising his pistol, he emptied his final magazine into the moving shapes, praying he would strike anything.

The slide locked back on an empty magazine, Tommy dropped his pistol. He realized he should have been colder than he was, it being January and all. He stared straight in front of him, right at the last gunman he had killed. He was vaguely aware of one of the three who had attempted to make a getaway screaming in pain. Shivering, there’s the cold, he thought, but at least I got that guy. Tommy frowned as he was enveloped in darkness.

 

 

CHAPTER FOUR

Several hours later and they had a solid number of casualties. Erickson was sitting in his office reading the preliminary reports. 16 Civilian dead, 34 wounded in the initial slaughter on Broadway. The two APD patrolmen who had tried to make the stop. Four of the six forensics team were killed on Broadway. Four Sheriff’s deputies killed in their cars as they left the garage at the Sheriff’s office. One Sheriff’s deputy killed firing from the second story window as the gunmen tried to storm the front door. Tommy and Will, the last of the forensics team killed assisting the Office standoff. Eight gunmen killed, four trying to charge the front door, one was even outfitted with an explosive vest that failed to go off. One gunman wounded, captured, and in stable condition with a SWAT team guarding him. Two escaped. Vanished without a trace. Total time from the APD SUV making contact to the surviving two gunmen escaping: 15 minutes, 38 seconds.

What Erickson couldn’t figure out was why Thompson and Will, he had just learned his last name was Schlitz, had left the relative safety of their van to chase after these guys. Tommy was 65 for fuck’s sake, and Will was a pudgy lab rat! Deep down, Erickson understood that it was probably some sense of duty, but right then, he was just furious at losing his friend.

He couldn’t stop watching the tapes. Security cameras all around the Office building and the surrounding buildings had captured every second of it. They figured out that the Pontiac had been reinforced with some steel plating to make it nominally bullet-proof, which explained the ineffectiveness of the shots fired by the two officers who made initial contact, especially since they had each pumped ten or twenty rounds into the frame of the car.

The tapes showed him the gunmen’s killing spree down Broadway. Witnesses are saying that it lasted for upwards of ten or fifteen minutes, but cameras don’t suffer from shock, and the tapes say it was 3 minutes and 24 seconds from first shots fired to the gunmen piling in their van to head to the Sheriff’s office. After the gunmen leave, the tapes also show Tommy running over to the fallen officers, appropriating their gear, and taking off on foot with Will Schlitz in tow.

2 minutes and 40 seconds later, the tapes show four of the gunmen tumbling out of the still moving van, setting up a skirmish line, and unloading on the deputies who were trying to respond as they left the garage. All four deputies who made it out before the garage was locked down were cut down in 54 seconds.

While the gunmen mowed his deputies down in front of the garage, the remaining seven gunmen jumped out of the car, allowing it to smash into the bollard. 32 seconds later, and all eleven gunmen are regrouped in front of the office, firing controlled bursts at the windows and front doors. 14 seconds later, there is a sharp increase in fire, as the four gunmen rush the front door. Luckily, they are cut down in only ten seconds.

The standoff continued for 3 minutes and 24 seconds before Tommy and Will made their move. Tommy killed the nearest gunman with a clean shot straight to the head, but Will just stood there, firing blindly and was cut down for it, even with Tommy desperately trying to thin the herd.

Tommy managed to get closer and kill up to three more, the video wasn’t conclusive on one of them, and the state forensics team won’t be here for a few more hours to replace the one Douglas County had lost. The tape shows Tommy getting the gunman in the back of the head 1 minute and 15 seconds after starting his own rush into the bollards. Tommy got hit in the leg, bad. Erickson shuddered. The medics said he took six rounds in the leg, nearly simultaneously, almost completely blowing it off at the knee. The medics said he had to have been losing consciousness around the time he emptied that last magazine at the surviving gunmen, that it was a miracle that he even got his rounds to land in the same zip code as the surviving gunmen, let along clip one in the hip. 2 minutes and 51 seconds after Tommy got hit, Tommy bled out, and the last two gunmen got away.

15 minutes and 38 seconds of pure terror and violence leaving Erickson with a decimated police force, no forensic capabilities, and short one of the best friends he would ever have. The two oldest guys in the department, although Tommy was technically not a deputy, they had to look out for each other. Erickson rubbed his eyes with his palm, and started to cry.

Erickson’s weeping continued uninterrupted for fifteen solid minutes until his cell phone started to buzz. Wiping away tears and snot from his nose, he composed himself long enough to realize that the call was coming through as a restricted number on his personal cell phone.

Confused, he picked it up, and denied the call. Erickson leaned back in his chair and started to think about everything he had seen on the tapes, within a matter of seconds that led him to start thinking about what he could have done differently, or how he wished it could have been him instead of any one of the victims. He knew that the news crews were already in town, and that this will be the largest terrorist attack since the wars “ended”.

The guilt and grieving process was interrupted yet again by a restricted call on his cell phone, and he again denied the call. This time, the caller tried again, on his personal cell, his work cell, and his direct office line. Startled, Erickson picked up his office phone.

“This…this is Sheriff Erickson.”

“Sheriff Erickson, this is James Gunderson, do you remember me?” Sheriff Erickson’s confusion only deepened as he struggled to respond.

“Gunderson…as in Judge Gunderson’s son?”

There was a grim determination on the other end of the phone line as the caller replied “That’s the one.”

What the hell does this guy want? Erickson racked his mind for more memories of this Gunderson. Something clicked, but it didn’t shed much light on why Samuel Gunderson would be calling him now.

“Aren’t you in the Army or something like that?” Erickson frowned into his handset as he tried to piece the puzzle together. His mind was numbed from the day’s events.

“Something like that. The Air Force actually, or at least I was. I left after the wars ended and the bases started being shut down. But that is not why I called you,” Gunderson’s voice was oddly soothing as he continued “I work in the private sector now, I run my own business actually, and I have something that will benefit both of us.”

Erickson’s heart started racing, somehow, someway, this Gunderson guy knew something that they didn’t know about the massacre this morning. “If it has something to do with the shit show that occurred this morning, I suggest you tell me right now.” Erickson attempted to be as polite and forceful as he could, but even he felt it was halfhearted.

“I won’t be doing that, Sheriff, not yet anyway, but I would like to meet with you at a mutual friend’s house.” Erickson could feel the tension Gunderson’s voice. He knew Gunderson knew something, but he didn’t care. He didn’t trust Gunderson, not yet.

“First tell me something about what you know, and then I will decide if we meet.” Erickson needed to assert himself in some way. As they spoke, he started to remember Gunderson more. Samuel, his father was a judge in town, mother was a teacher at the community college. Joined the Air Force right after college. Upstanding kid, Erickson supposed, but that had nothing to do with this morning’s killings.

“Fair enough Sheriff. We have the two missing gunmen in our custody, we know the identity of not only the men who were killed or captured this morning, but we also know where they were trained, and how they entered the country.” Erickson’s eyes widened. The bit about the two escapees hadn’t been released yet. “We believe that this is the first in a series of attacks, that the attackers are a new, to America anyway, breed of narco-terrorism, and that you and your small force of deputies are going to be sorely out matched within a couple of months.”

Erickson paused for a moment, taking a few deep breaths, “Listen, Mr. Gunderson, I do not know who you think you are, but if you’re fucking with me-”

“Check your phone, Sheriff,” Gunderson interrupted. Erickson looked down at his personal cell phone as it started to buzz with an incoming text message. Picking it up, he unlocked the phone and let out an audible gasp.

“So you see the picture?” Gunderson asked intensely. “Yes,” Erickson gasped, “But how the hell did you get this?” The picture showed two men, handcuffed and on their knees with two more men holding rifles above them. Even though they weren’t wearing masks anymore, Erickson recognized the two men in the picture from the hours he had devoted to watching the tapes. Same shirts, same body armor. But without masks, he could tell they had a darker complexion than the average Minnesotan.

“Trade secrets, Sheriff” Gunderson replied, “the man on the right is Anwar al-Kobani, a radical militant who has popped up from time to time all over the middle east. The man on the left is Jesus Longoria Reyes, a narcotics trafficker and mid-level managerial thug for one of the new start up cartels in Mexico.”

Erickson thought for a minute “when and where should I meet you?”

“7:00 AM tomorrow morning, and meet us at the Severson manor, Mr. Severson is a mutual friend of ours.” Gunderson replied. The sheriff looked at the clock on his wall, it was already 11:30 PM. He had been at work for nearly 20 hours already.

“I’ll be there. Is this one of those ‘come alone’ type of deals, or can I bring a friend?” There was a slight pause on the line, as if Gunderson was composing himself for what he had to say next.

“Bring only who you can trust, Sheriff. It’s going to get ugly out there.”

Copyright Spencer T. Jacobson 2016