“Liberty Two, this is Liberty Actual. Commence firing on the house.”
“Roger. This is Liberty Two. Firing on the house at my command,” he said, patting Cole on the upper arm. “Just got the order to fire, bitch. Holy shit, this is going to rock.”
“You want me to start firing?” said Cole.
“Fuck yeah!” he said.
“Does this thing have a safety?”
“I didn’t see one,” said Bertelson, examining the metal along the right side of the machine gun. “Didn’t you train on this gun?”
Bertelson knew how to load the ammunition belt through the tray, remembering the trick with the extractor. You had to manually lock the extractor forward before closing the feed tray cover. Beyond that, he’d never fired it, which was why he swapped out with Randy. Rank had its privileges.
“I fired it once at a demo, but it was already loaded.”
“Pull the bolt back and light these fuckers up already.”
Randy Cole yanked the charging handle back and slammed it forward, sighting in for a few seconds. He pulled the trigger and nothing happened. “Are you sure this thing doesn’t have a safety?”
“What’s the hold up, Liberty Two?” he heard through his earpiece.
Cole examined the left side of the gun and the area under the trigger.
“Pull the charging handle back again,” Bertelson said. “Maybe it didn’t chamber right.”
“Liberty Two, this is Actual. What the fuck is the hold up?”
Bertelson leaned on his side to access the radio attached to the front of his chest rig. A wet crack stopped him from pressing the transmit button.
What the hell?
The raspberry bush above the gun barrel snapped and fell on the metal cylinder, immediately followed by a sickening wet splash. He twisted on his back to face Cole.
“Pull the Goddamn—”
The gunner’s head rested against the machine gun’s stock, still facing down the weapon’s sights. Eyes wide open, he looked fine except for the two small holes punched through his forehead. A bright crimson mist settled over Cole’s gore-covered legs. Bertelson felt a deep, driving pain in his upper back, paralyzing him in place as gunfire erupted. He never felt the rounds that ended his life.
Chapter 37
EVENT +75:23
Limerick, Maine
Eli Russell leaned against the barn and waited for Liberty Two to respond. By now, he’d expected to hear the comforting chatter of a thirty-caliber machine gun pouring seven hundred .30-06 rounds per minute into the house. Right now, he’d settle for a few rounds from the dozen AR-15s spread among the trees.
Anything but dead silence!
“Liberty Two, this is Actual. What the fuck is the hold up?” he said, squeezing the handheld radio to the point he felt the plastic start to give.
Two sharp sounds, spaced less than a second apart, reached his ears. Hillebrand backed away from the corner, nearly knocking him over. Before Eli could regain his footing, the morning stillness erupted in a vicious barrage of gunfire. The corner of the barn exploded, spraying Hillebrand and Eli with splinters. Bullets ripped past the barn, forming a virtual wall of steel that caused all of the men to drop to the ground. Screams from the trees rose above the sustained roar of what had to be dozens of guns raking Bertelson’s men.
Short bursts of unexpected automatic fire added to the chaos, driving the men, including Eli, to hug the ground even tighter. Bullets penetrated the siding several feet back from the edge of the barn at waist height, showering them with sharp pieces of broken cedar. The gravity of their situation weighed heavy as Eli fought through the paralyzing fear that glued him to the ground. They couldn’t advance against that much firepower. Not with the thirty-caliber out of action—and he had to assume it was out of action. The first two shots came from a suppressed weapon, likely a sniper targeting the machine-gun crew. He didn’t see much of a choice at this point. They’d have to retreat unless one of Bertelson’s men put the machine gun into action. Judging by the cries of agony rising above the gunfire, he wasn’t hopeful. He reached for his handheld to order a retreat when he noticed that the gunfire had slackened to a few scattered shots emanating from the forest.
“They’re reloading! Fire! Fire!” he screamed, flipping his rifle’s selector switch to automatic and lunging past Hillebrand.
Eli slammed into the ground at the corner, firing into the house without aiming.
***
Alex sprinted into the kitchen, stopping in front of the safe box. He waited for Samantha to clear his line of sight and fired the rest of his magazine well over Ed’s head at the barn, hoping to penetrate the walls and drop a few of the militia on the other side.
“Nice job, Walkers!” he yelled, nodding at Samantha as she climbed over the sandbags.
His hands automatically reloaded the rifle while he assessed the situation. He didn’t detect any return fire, which confirmed his panicked suspicion that the thirty-caliber machine gun had been the centerpiece of the militia’s attack. Panicked for a reason. If the thirty-caliber had come into play, most of them would be lying in their own blood on the floor. Designed to stop standard .223 projectiles, the sandbag barriers would prove little match for the .30-06 bullet fired by the Browning machine gun. He’d spent more than half of a thirty-round magazine putting the gun out of action, killing its crew and disabling the ammunition box. The gun was still serviceable, but he doubted anyone would heave the bodies out of the way and try to work the gun.
A bullet snapped through the pine cabinet to the right of the kitchen window, knocking the door open and spilling blue ceramic fragments onto the granite counter. Another bullet hit the top of Ed’s protective barricade, spraying dirt over his clumsy attempt to reload the AR. It was taking everyone too long to reload. Ryan’s HK416A5 answered the sporadic crackle of distant small arms with a sustained burst of automatic fire. Alex caught movement beyond Ed, near the corner of the barn.
“Get down!” he screamed, kneeling behind the safe box.
Bullets sliced through the kitchen, shattering the sliding glass door and splintering the kitchen table. He felt the safe box shudder as projectiles hammered through the sheet metal, their energy absorbed by the tightly packed dirt. He dashed across the open area in front of the basement door in an attempt to reach his father, who was firing rapidly at the left side of the barn. He slid into the great room on the hardwood floor, bullets puncturing the wood behind before he reached Tim Fletcher in the corner. A quick glance through one of the western windows showed a figure stumbling into the open, a victim of the .308 bullets that his dad had fired through the barn. A single aimed shot from Tim’s Vietnam-era relic collapsed the man on his stomach.
“Focus on this side!” he yelled and sighted in on the men exposed beyond the right corner of the barn.
The sandbags and windowsill in front of Alex exploded, driving him beneath the top of the barrier. He spit dirt and pieces of wood onto his vest as the fusillade continued. An extended burst of automatic fire from Ryan’s position slowed the rate of incoming fire long enough for him to put his rifle into action. Jamming the vertical fore grip against the sandbags, he canted the rifle and fired rapidly using the forty-five-degree angled iron sights. Under heavy fire, the men disappeared behind the barn; one pulled lifelessly out of sight by his legs.
Tim squeezed beside him, seeking some of the cover provided by the barricade. Bullets snapped and ricocheted through the great room, clanging off the wood-burning stove behind them. Alex glanced around the half wall separating the great room from the kitchen and watched their once beautiful kitchen methodically disintegrate as the rate of fire increased.
Most of the cabinets sat wide open, knocked off their hinges to expose broken plates and glasses. The stainless-steel refrigerator’s door panel was dented in three places around small holes. Water spewed out of the shattered chrome faucet. A bullet burst through the half wall a few inches left of his head, splitting the distance bet
ween Alex and his father. Unfazed by the fresh coating of drywall dust, Tim Fletcher kept shooting his M14 at the trees.
The men hidden in the woods were finding their rhythm after the intense fusillade that sent over two hundred rounds of various calibers into the trees without warning. Even if Alex’s crew managed to kill or disable half of the men, six ARs in semi-proficient hands were capable of returning the same number of bullets twice every minute. Alex wiped his yellow-tinted shooting glasses with his sleeve and leaned into his father’s ear.
“Ryan, what’s your status?’
A few nervous seconds passed.
“Busy. They’re finding good cover behind the trees.”
“Copy. Keep your fire rate high. Out.”
Another round of bullets sliced through the drywall, stinging his face.
“Watch the left side, in case they send another guy. I’ll be right back,” he said to his dad and slid along the floor to Ed’s position. “What are you seeing?” he asked Ed, firing three rounds at a head peeking around the barn.
“Not much of anything! I can’t see shit anymore!”
Alex scanned the tree line through his riflescope and saw the problem. The bright light reflecting off the leaves and bushes contrasted with the dark forest behind them, making it nearly impossible to find a well-concealed, man-sized target in the short period of time allowed by the incoming bullets. The effect was similar to looking inside a dark house on a sunny day. The militia had the opposite situation. Even though they couldn’t easily identify individual targets within the house, the windows and doors made obvious targets for their rifles. Dirt sprayed Alex’s face, followed by several thumps against the sandbag barrier.
“It’s holding together nicely,” he said, patting the sandbags.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s getting harder to put my head over the top to fire,” said Ed.
Alex checked his watch. “The marines arrive in seven minutes.”
“That’s too long,” said Ed, rising to fire.
Somewhere in the distance, the sound of a second battle rose to a crescendo, competing with the gunfire from the northern tree line.
“What the hell is that?” said Ed, ducking as dirt sprayed and the sandbags thumped.
The Thorntons.
***
Linda leaned into the sandbags and sighted in on the first man to emerge from the trees. Bullets tore chunks out of the drywall around her and fractured the windowsill, stinging her face as she fired three steady shots into the man, dropping him in the tall grass. Alex wasn’t bullshitting about needing these glasses.
“I need some help here!” she said, catching Charlie’s arrival in the adjacent window through her peripheral vision.
A bullet or splinter grazed her hat, followed immediately by a metallic crack that almost knocked the rifle out of her grip. She jammed the rifle into her shoulder and stared through the EOTech, quickly determining that the sight had been destroyed. Linda flipped the sight’s quick-release lever and yanked it off the tactical rail, tossing it aside. She triggered the rear flip-up sight and leaned into the gun, finding a staggered column of four men sprinting toward the house. One of them fell to his knees, a geyser of bright red arterial spray erupting above his left clavicle as he pitched forward. She aligned her rifle’s sights with the next uniformed target and pressed the trigger rapidly, tumbling the man into the patchy field.
She shifted her aim and started to press the trigger when a bullet exploded through one of the sandbags in front of her, striking her in the chest below the rifle and spinning her forty-five degrees to the right. Unable to breathe from the hammer strike to her ribs, she attempted to turn and face the window. Still kneeling, a second bullet caught her in the left ankle.
***
Charlie fired at the magnified target in the middle of the green holographic circle and shifted the rifle to find another. He aimed at the next man’s stomach, knowing that the bullet would arrive a fraction of a second later, when the man’s upper torso crossed the bullet’s path. Leading a target moving toward or away from the shooter at this short distance required minimal adjustment. He eased the trigger as the man tumbled out of view, leaving a splash of red in his field of vision.
Linda’s stealing my targets!
He glanced at her in time to see the second round explode her ankle, knocking her to the floor before she disappeared in a shower of dirt and drywall.
“Linda!” he yelled, diving between the spilled sandbags and his wife.
He slung his rifle and grabbed the drag handle at the top of the Dragon Skin body armor. A second fusillade of heavy-caliber bullets ripped through the second barrier, obliterating the barrier he had just left.
Sweet Jesus!
He had to get Linda behind the safe box before another burst of that tore into the house. Bullets punctured the sheet metal in front of them, hissing past Charlie as he dragged his moaning wife to the safe box. He saw blonde hair poke above the sandbags.
“Stay down! Stay down!” he screamed.
He lifted Linda over the top of the sandbag wall and dumped her in, eliciting a scream of pain and anger. Foul words chased him out of the room.
“Shit, sorry, honey!” he said.
“Dad!” his daughters screamed. “What do we do?”
“Use the first aid kit to stop the bleeding. I have to go!”
Charlie sprinted out of the bedroom, fumbling for his radio.
“All units. All units. The eastern flank has collapsed. I say again, the eastern flank has collapsed. They’re using a heavy-caliber rifle. Went right through the sandbags!”
“Copy,” said someone.
Bullets splintered the doorframe leading to Ryan’s position as Charlie approached the stairs, answered by a long burst of automatic fire from the kid’s rifle. He hit the stairs hard, smashing his right hip into the handrail before descending. A few steps below him, a bullet fragmented the stair riser, followed by a second projectile three steps higher, a few inches to the right of his left leg. The splinters of wood stung his leg, but he felt lucky enough to smirk. A third round passed through the stairs, entering his left calf and erasing his smile. Blood splatted the white balusters, one of the last details he’d remember after tumbling down the rest of the staircase.
***
Kate ducked below the sandbag barrier, thankful for the momentary reprieve, despite the sinister implications of Charlie’s report. Incoming fire from the backyard had reached the point where she barely aimed the rifle before firing a few rounds and dropping back down. Bullets snapped by her head each time or exploded dirt in her face. Struggling to activate her radio, she observed the bathroom behind her for the first time. The sink was shattered, most of it lying in large pieces on the tile floor. A few jagged chunks remained in place, attached to the drain and the faucet. The top half of the mirror clung stubbornly to the white frame, the bottom sprinkled in shards among the white porcelain on the floor. The toilet next to her remained intact, perforated in at least four places. Water flowed out of the tank, spreading across the tile. The bowl cracked in half and dropped to the floor, causing her to scream. She pressed the radio transmit button.
“Copy,” she said, leaning her head down to speak into the radio attached to the top of her vest.
“Fuck it,” she muttered, using the rifle to push off the sandbags.
She stayed low, running out of the bathroom and colliding with Alex, who gave her a once-over and hugged her.
“You okay?” he said, letting go quickly and pulling her toward the sitting room.
“I’m fine,” she said, shaking loose of his grip. “I got it.”
“It’s just us on the eastern side,” said Alex.
“What about Charlie and Linda?”
Alex pointed through the French doors leading to the foyer and slid behind sandbags. “We’re on our own! Flip down your magnifier. This is close-up work,” he said, pulling her in tightly behind him.
Kate stared through the oddly intact m
atrix of glass panes at a body slumped on the floor at the bottom of the stairs. Charlie’s fur hat was visible through the lower left pane. Her gaze drifted up the stairs. The few intact balusters were sprayed bright red.
“What about Linda?” she said, releasing the lock holding the magnifier in place and flipping it out of the way of the EOTech sight.
“She’s not answering her radio,” he said, raising his head high enough to see out of the window. “Here they come!”
Alex lifted his rifle over the sandbags and fired rapidly, spurring Kate to react. She braced her weapon against the right side of the barricade and fired into the men advancing along the garage bay doors, not bothering to aim through the holographic sight. Crimson stains bathed the white garage bay doors as the men dropped in a maelstrom of .223 caliber projectiles. Kate kept firing long after they had plunged to the gravel driveway in twisted heaps, stupefied by the sudden, devastating violence they had unleashed.
“Get back,” he said, grabbing her vest.
Dirt exploded through the center of the barricade, knocking Alex backward. Kate felt a hard tug and fell with him.
Chapter 38
EVENT +75:27
Limerick, Maine
Eli peeked around the corner at ground level, only able to hold his head there for a few seconds before splinters burrowed into his face and neck. He’d seen enough. Three shooters, positioned to pour rounds into the barn—only one of them making a persistent effort. The guy with the automatic. He could take care of that for the breach team. Staying low and squirming back along the concrete foundation toward Paul Hillebrand, bullets tore through the siding above him.
“I got a plan!” he shouted. “We’ll use our two automatics to suppress the gun position above the porch and the one inside the door. You’ll lead your squad into the house, firing as you go. Send one more guy around the other side to draw fire from any other shooters. Make sure he has a radio.”
“Are you sure, Eli?”
Eli’s earpiece activated.
THE ALEX FLETCHER BOXSET: Books 1-5 Page 92
