Primary Command

by Jack Mars

  “You got your radio on?”

  Murphy took his little two-way radio out of the armrest compartment to his right. He pressed the TALK button. “Stone, you read me?”

  “Stone, you read me?” said Stone’s radio in the back seat.

  Murphy let go of the button. “On,” he said.

  “In and out, five minutes,” Stone said.

  Murphy glanced up and down the street. It was quieter here than on other blocks, certainly, but there were people walking in the shadows. Lovers, drinkers, people coming home to their flats after a night out.

  “See you in a bit,” Murphy said.

  Or in the next life.

  * * *

  “A little tight in here,” Ed said.

  They climbed the narrow stairs in single file, Luke leading, Keller in the middle, and Ed bringing up the rear. It was a small building, with just one apartment on each floor. They reached the third-floor landing, moved along the hall to the door at the end, and Keller used his key to open it.

  Inside, the apartment was small, with tall windows and exposed brick. Luke supposed it was charming. It was the kind of place that would turn up in one of the home décor magazines Becca liked to read.

  Keller turned up the lights from a round knob on the wall. They came up gradually, three lamps hanging from the ceiling in a row gaining brightness as one.

  “Watch the windows,” Luke said. “Don’t get too close to them.”

  Keller responded as if Luke had told him to go directly to the windows. Just below the nearest one, there was a laptop computer on a small desk. He leaned over the desk and pressed a button on the laptop.

  “I’ve got the audio on here,” he said. “I was making another copy of it before—”

  Just then, the window shattered near Keller’s bald head. It exploded inward, sending flying shards of glass across the room. The glass sprayed all over Keller’s face. Instantly Luke dropped to the floor, at least as fast as Keller’s body did.

  “Ed! Kill the lights, man!”

  Almost before he said it, the room went black.

  The windows above their heads kept shattering, glass crashing inward. Luke could hear the gunshots from outside. It could be a prankster lighting off firecrackers. Someone was firing from a silenced gun.

  “Is he dead?” Ed said.

  “I don’t know. Keller? Keller!”

  Luke’s mind played the event over from the beginning. Keller leaned toward the computer. Suddenly, the spray of glass. Also, a spatter of blood.

  “I’m alive,” Keller said. “But I’m hit. My face is bleeding.”

  “Okay,” Luke said. “We’ll deal with that in a second. Are you in pain?”

  “No. But I’m bleeding. My heart is pounding. I have adrenaline racing through my system. I’ve seen guys die almost before they realized they were hit.”

  “Thanks for the biology lesson,” Luke said. “Ed, did you see where those shots came from?”

  “I saw a shot knock a chunk of plaster off the ceiling. The angle tells me the shot came from street level.”

  Luke crawled to Keller. He rolled him over roughly. Keller didn’t resist at all. His face was awash in blood. Wonderful. Keller himself was breathing heavily. Luke ran his hands over face and head, looking for an entry wound. Nothing, just cuts. He ran his hands over Keller’s chest and neck. Nothing at all.

  “You got lucky,” he said. “Your face got cut by flying glass. You didn’t get shot.”

  Keller didn’t speak. He just kept breathing.

  “Keller, are you all right? You have to answer me.”

  “I’m okay.”

  Luke went into the pockets of his cargo pants. He took out Keller’s Sig Sauer and the magazine that went with it. The mag was loaded. Luke pushed it into the gun and drove it home. He handed it to Keller.

  “Here. You might need this.”

  Luke looked back at Ed. Ed was sprawled on the floor. He had his pistol out.

  “How you doing, Ed?”

  “I’m fine, man. You know, with my leg how it is, I can’t exactly pop up and down. It hurts, even with the painkillers. I can’t crouch. I can’t run. I don’t have much leverage. The truth is, I agreed to come on this trip because I never been to Montreal before. Thought it would be easy. What are we even doing, picking up some guy? I figured while we’re passing through, I might scope out the city a touch.”

  “Yeah?” Luke said. “What do you think so far?”

  “I’m ready to go home.”

  Another burst of gunfire ricocheted through the apartment. More glass flew. There was an automatic weapon out there somewhere. It was keeping them on the floor. That was trouble. If Luke was the bad guys, he’d keep firing that gun while an assault team hit the building.

  Murphy.

  Where was he in all this?

  Luke took out his two-way radio. He pressed the TALK button. “Murphy, we are under attack. Do you read me? Murphy, come in. Do you read?”

  Nothing. Silence on the other end.

  “Murphy!”

  * * *

  Murphy had watched the whole thing unfolding.

  He pulled the car about fifty yards up the block while the hit squad came together. There was no sense getting in their way. They appeared like dark ghosts emerging from the shadows. An SUV drove up and stopped at the end of the street, blocking any escape that way. In his rearview mirror, Murphy watched another one do the same thing at the top of the street.

  A man placed a tripod on the hood of a car, then mounted a heavy gun on top of it. From this distance, its profile suggested an M240 machinegun. It had a sound suppressor so large, it was nearly as long the barrel of the gun itself.

  Oh boy. The guy was going to try to take the kill shot from ground level? Was that a good idea?

  Maybe they had another thought in mind.

  Murphy saw the light go inside the third-floor apartment. A few seconds later, he saw the muzzle flashes from the machine gun. That sound suppressor really worked. The flashes told Murphy that the guy was lighting up Keller’s apartment. But all Murphy could hear was the snap of small firecrackers and the Christmas jingles of the spent cartridges ejected and hitting the pavement.

  The two-way radio suddenly barked to life.

  Stone’s voice came through. “Murphy, we are under attack. Do you read me? Murphy, come in. Do you read?”

  Murphy stared at the radio. His mind worked through scenarios. He could ignore the call. Stone and Newsam and Keller could all die. Then no one would ever know Stone made that call.

  But what if one of them lived?

  And even if they all died, what was he going to say, that he didn’t hear it or see it happening? That wasn’t going to wash.

  “Murphy!” Stone shouted.

  Murphy glanced out the window to his left. A man stood about fifteen feet away, out in the street. Murphy didn’t get a good look at his face. Instead, he saw the snout of the gun in his hand. It was a little semi-automatic, with another large silencer.

  The muzzle flashed and the gun bucked in the man’s hands. Murphy flinched as high-velocity rounds struck the window an inch from his face.

  And bounced off.

  “Double cross! I knew it!”

  The man kept firing. The window cracked and splintered, but held. Murphy slammed the car in gear. He glanced to his right. Another man was there, on the passenger side, just behind him. Murphy caught a glimpse of a bigger gun, an Uzi or Tec-9. The man sprayed the car with bullets.

  Dunk-dunk-dunk-dunk-dunk!

  Murphy stomped on the gas. The car went peeling out into the street. The man to Murphy’s left ran alongside it, still firing into the driver’s side window.

  No way was that window going to hold up.

  Murphy slammed the brakes. The running man’s momentum carried him another several feet. He turned and began firing into the windshield. Murphy veered hard left and crashed into the man. THUMP as the man’s hands flew up into the air and he went under th
e driver’s side of the car.

  Murphy crashed into a small white car across the street. It was a Toyota or some subcompact. Heavy metal crunched as the armored Mercedes demolished the car and drove right into and through its frame. Murphy’s head wrenched forward and banged off the steering wheel. That rang his bell.

  No airbags. They must have removed them to make way for all the armor.

  Murphy shook his head, trying to clear it.

  He reached behind his seat. His hand found the MP5 and brought it back around in front. His mouth hung open as he stared down at it, caressed it. No sound suppressor on this thing. This was gonna be LOUD. He was going to rip up the night.

  The second guy had come around to the right side of the car. He fired burst after burst at the front passenger side window. The window spiderwebbed, flecks of it flying inward. It began to sag. It was almost a goner. The man was on the other side of it, ten feet away, pumping automatic bursts into it.

  Suddenly, the guy stopped. Murphy could almost hear his thought: Out. He could see the guy’s silhouette eject the spent magazine and reach to pop another one in.

  Well, that window was gonna go anyway.

  Murphy opened up with the MP5, the ugly blat of automatic fire deafening him. The window, badly abused from the outside, compromised, wasn’t expecting more abuse from the inside. It shattered outward.

  Murphy ripped it with the MP5, drilling rounds into the attacker, shredding him. The man did a death dance, his gun flying into the air. Then he dropped to the ground, disappearing from view.

  “Two down,” he said.

  Murphy sat back for a few seconds and took a breath. His ears were ringing. The edges of his eyesight were darkening. He had face-planted right into that steering wheel. He put his left hand to his face. It came away bloody. He slapped himself hard across the cheek.

  “Wake up!”

  The MP5 was loud. Speck’s men had been hoping to do this quietly. In a crowded neighborhood like this one, that was the right approach. But the plan was ruined now. Between the car crash and the rattle of the MP5, the neighbors were awake.

  “Speck!” he shouted in frustration, before he was even aware he was going to do it.

  The thing could have worked out in everybody’s favor. Instead, Speck tried to kill him. Murphy had specifically warned him not to do that.

  A thought began to form. He couldn’t quite articulate it yet. Speck had double-crossed him. And yet, he had sent Murphy a lot of money earlier today. Murphy was already rich from this deal, and it was clear that Speck wasn’t planning to pay him the rest of the money anyway. Murphy didn’t owe Speck anything.

  And Speck didn’t even know his name.

  Five million bucks and I walk away from everything. Two point five million and… I keep my job?

  The two-way radio had fallen to the floor by his feet. He reached down and picked it up. As he rose back up, he fought a wave of dizziness. He pressed TALK.

  “Stone?”

  There was a moment of quiet.

  He looked to his right. Two men were creeping toward him from the SUV that was blocking the bottom of the street. They had guns out, pistols, but they hadn’t taken a shot yet. They were leery, maybe. They had just watched Murphy kill two men.

  Murphy fired a blast out the missing passenger side window. The men split up, each taking one side of the street, flanking him. They were going to try a pincer move.

  “Stone, do you read me?”

  Stone’s voice squawked over the airwaves. “Murphy!”

  “Yeah.”

  “What the hell is going on out there?”

  Murphy looked to his left. The man with the machine gun was still there, still sending bursts into the apartment. Four guys were going up the fire escape of the building. As Murphy watched, three more guys smashed the windows of the street-level store. They lit gasoline bombs and tossed them inside. Within seconds, the store was on fire, the flames dancing in the night.

  Somewhere, sirens had begun howling, and were coming this way.

  One of the bombers kicked in the red front door of the building. The three men disappeared inside. They were running out of time, and they knew it. They were pulling out all the stops.

  “Murphy! Status!”

  “Bad,” Murphy said. “We got problems out here. I had to kill a couple of guys. You’ve got what looks like a standard tripod-mounted M240 with a really high-tech suppressor on it trained on your windows. I wouldn’t stand up if I were you. You’ve got some guys coming up the fire escape, and some more coming up the stairs. And they’re giving you a hotfoot. The whole first floor of the building is now burning nicely.”

  “Murphy, what are you doing?”

  Murphy looked in front of him. Now the windshield was cracking and splintering. One of the men from the SUV was directly in front of him, on the sidewalk between the ruined Toyota and another brick building. He was using the wrecked car for cover and was firing into Murphy’s armored windshield.

  “Hold on a second,” Murphy said. He put the walkie-talkie down on the seat and slid it under his left leg. He put the car in gear again and stomped on the gas.

  The Mercedes peeled out on the street. The tires shrieked and burned on cobblestone, then caught. The big armored SUV lurched forward, driving the Toyota in front of it. The Toyota slid a foot—something was caught—but then the resistance snapped and broke. The man with the gun made a wide-eyed look of surprise.

  Murphy pushed the Toyota at high speed into the brick wall.

  He rode the impact. His body wrenched forward, but he didn’t hit his head this time. The guy with the gun was gone, caught between a car and a hard place.

  Murphy picked up the radio.

  “Stone?”

  “Yeah, Murphy.”

  “Hold tight. Watch your windows and doors. They’re coming in. I’m gonna try to work my way back to you. Listen, I hope you picked the optional insurance coverages on this car. I think I put a couple of dings in it.”

  Murphy pushed his door open and rolled out onto the cobblestone street.

  * * *

  Luke looked at Ed in the semi-darkness.

  Luke was crouched low. Both Ed and Keller were sprawled on the floor. Luke had a hand on Keller’s chest to keep him there. Keller wasn’t really trying to get up.

  “We got guests coming.”

  Ed nodded. “I heard him as well as you did. Up the stairs and up the fire escape. And the building is on fire. What do you want to do?”

  Luke shook his head. “I don’t know. Keller, where’s the fire escape in this place?”

  “It’s a little platform outside the bedroom windows.”

  “This place is a one-bedroom?”

  “Yes.”

  They were squeezed. The hallway came to that door at the front of the apartment. The fire escape came to the windows in the back. Men were about to burst in from both directions. There was a shooter with a machine gun. He had stopped firing through the windows, but he was still out there, shooting at something. And fire would be coming up through the floor soon enough. Luke shook his head.

  “It’s about to get hot in here.”

  “Yeah,” Ed said. “Listen to the gunner out there. He’s shooting the walls now. He’s probably trying to punch a hole through the brickwork. That’s what I would do.”

  Luke listened. Ed was right. The automatic rounds were hitting the outside of the building, more or less exactly where he was crouched. If that guy managed to open up the wall… And really, it wasn’t a matter of if, but of when.

  Luke didn’t want to think about that right now.

  “Okay, this is what we do,” he said to Ed. “I’ll get the bedroom, you get the front door. Kill anything that comes in. Sound okay?”

  “Fine.”

  “Keller, you stay low, maybe crawl behind some furniture. You’re the reason for this party, so stay out of sight.”

  “What about the fire?” Keller said.

  Luke shrugged. “P
ray for rain.”

  * * *

  The man at the machine gun was focused on his job. He pumped rounds into the brick just below the third-floor window. His gun ate the ammunition belt, but he had three more stacked after that one.

  Murphy gazed up there. That wall was coming apart. The guy would knock a nice hole in it any second. After that first hole opened up, he could make Swiss cheese out of that thing.

  What a scene. Between the machine gun and the fire, they were turning that building into something out of Beirut, circa 1982.

  Murphy’s MP5 was spent. He was out of extra magazines for it, so he tossed it. He was down to his Glock pistol now. It was fine. He liked the Glock.

  Murphy looked at the machine gun. It was an M240, just as he had guessed.

  He walked right up to the man wielding it. The guy was so riveted by the action across the street, he forgot to pay attention to his surroundings. Murphy sighed.

  Situational awareness. It was the key to everything. A lot of people didn’t seem to know that.

  The guy must have heard Murphy’s footsteps. Too late. He looked up at Murphy and was surprised to see him there. His eyes went wide.

  “Hi,” Murphy said. “Nice gun. Mind if I try it?”

  He shot the guy in the face, then pushed his thick corpse out of the way.

  He got in behind the machine gun. He put his eye to the scope. VERY nice. There was only one man left on the fire escape. The first three had already gone in through the window. This last one looked like he was either waiting to go in, or trying to obtain a shot through the window.

  Murphy squeezed the trigger and squirted the guy. The guy’s body folded and went flying through the window and into the apartment.

  Murphy looked up. That was it. That was the only shot he had.

  Sirens were everywhere now, close, closer still, and far away. They were bringing everything they had.

  Somewhere above his head was the heavy beat of a helicopter.

  He’d better get off the street before someone got overzealous and decided he’d make a good target. He took the remaining ammo belts from the M240, draped them over his shoulder, and crossed the street. He looked both ways before he crossed.