Total Mayhem

by John Gilstrap

  “Want to talk?” Gail asked, finally.

  “What, are you the good cop to the other guy’s bad cop?”

  She fell silent again. It made no sense to engage in the dick-knocking banter. She’d spoken too soon. In time, he’d come to realize that speaking with someone was better than being alone with his demons. The fact that she was a woman—and not a bad-looking one at that—could only help her cause.

  Minutes passed before Masterson said, “What do you people want from me?”

  “Information,” Gail said. She tried to make it sound like the most obvious answer in the world.

  “I’m not a snitch,” Masterson declared.

  “Good for you. That’s admirable.”

  “And now you patronize.”

  Gail laughed. “Oh, come on, Logan. What am I supposed to do with I’m not a snitch?”

  He allowed himself a smile that transformed into a wince. Point taken. “What are you looking for?”

  “Let’s start with why,” Gail said. “What could possibly drive you to open fire on a stadium full of innocent civilians?”

  “The same thing that drives you to a shithole like this to grill me with questions.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Ah, nice going on the shocked expression,” Masterson mocked. “Want to show me your badge again, Special Agent?”

  Gail didn’t try to perpetuate the ruse anymore.

  Masterson continued, “I recognize your guy, you know. I worked with him in the Army. Can’t remember his name, but I know he was a D-Boy.” Something dawned behind his eyes. “Oh, now I get it. Because we crawled through some of the same trenches, maybe he can get me to turn snitch.”

  There was that word again. Clearly, there was no worse crime in Masterson’s world. “You were talking about your reason,” Gail prompted.

  “Money!” Masterson shouted the word and made her jump. “Come on, be honest. Isn’t that why all of us go back and double dip in the killing business? Money. Gobs and gobs of it.”

  Gail bristled. That wasn’t at all why she did what she did. He was trying to get a rise out of her. “Somebody paid you to shoot up a high school football game?”

  A smile crept into his pain. “They don’t call it Black Friday because I shot up a football game,” he said. “They call it that because a bunch of people shot up a bunch of high school football games.”

  “But why?”

  “I didn’t ask. They handed me a pile of cash and gave me an assignment. I did my job.”

  “Who would pay for such a thing?”

  “People who want to sow terror.” Masterson stated that last part without emotion, as if he were stating the obvious.

  Gail leaned forward in her chair. “That’s a big step, Logan, from Army Special Forces to terrorist.”

  Masterson winced against something, a stab of pain, she imagined. “You think I’m a terrorist?”

  “You opened fire on a stadium.”

  “But I’m not the terrorist,” he said. “I’m just the tool. The terrorists are the guys who pay me.”

  Gail was engaged now and saw no reason to back away. At least he was talking. “That’s a hell of a rationalization,” she said. “How do you sleep at night?”

  “I don’t,” he said. “Sure as shit not in here. “But I’ve been killing people for money for my whole adult life.”

  “For the military,” Gail said. “That’s different.”

  “Now who’s rationalizing?” Another stab, but he seemed proud of himself for making his point. “When I was in the Sandbox blowing away Hajis for Uncle Sam, how do you think the people downrange from me thought about the asshole who was shooting at them?”

  “You were doing your duty.”

  “I was doing my duty on Black Friday. People who are getting shot never think heroic thoughts about their shooter. They think they’re being singled out unjustly, because they’ve talked themselves into believing that the shit they’re doing—the shit I’m killing them for—is at least as noble as the shit I’ve talked myself into believing. That’s what rationalization is all about. Ask your fellow mercenary out there. It’s about the adrenaline and the money. I gave up on causes a long time ago. And I’m sure it’s no surprise to you that pulling triggers in the private sector pays a shit ton more than it does on Uncle’s dime.”

  Gail was dumbstruck. Literally, as in struck dumb by what she was hearing. How does anyone go that far off the rails?

  “You look like I smacked you,” Masterson said.

  “I kind of feel like you did,” Gail confessed. He’d knocked her off message—if she’d ever had one—but keeping him talking was better than having him lock up. “How many like you are there?”

  “What, burned-out SF shooters? I’m gonna guess as many SF shooters as there are, minus maybe a hundred.”

  That wasn’t possible, and Gail knew it. He was trying to scare her, and frankly, it was working. If he was trying to engage her in an argument, she was going to disappoint him. “I meant how many of you are there? How many on your team?”

  “Three thousand four hundred and seventy-eight,” he said.

  Gail felt her jaw drop.

  Masterson laughed. “Shit, I don’t know. It could be that many, I guess, but I have no idea. It’s not like we have a clubhouse where we sign in. I’m what you call a lone wolf.”

  Gail’s bullshit bell rang. “Then who were you afraid of snitching on?” Her gut tensed as she heard her words. That was the last thing she wanted him to be thinking about.

  And he shut down.

  Gail changed gears. “So, as far as you know, you’re part of a pack of lone wolves.”

  “We’re done here,” Masterson said. “Let me die in peace.”

  “My partners have gone to get you a doctor,” Gail said. “You’re being treated horribly here. We’re going to change that.”

  “I’m going to die here anyway,” Masterson said.

  Gail sat back in her chair and nodded. “Yeah, you are,” she said. “And it’s going to be pretty awful. The question you need to ask yourself is how awful do you want it to be?”

  “I want a lawyer.”

  Gail’s laugh was genuine, and it made her feel terrible. “That’s not happening. This is not that kind of prison. This is a place designed to suck information out of you and then leave you bleeding to death. Did you know that no one even knows you’re here? Hell, they don’t even know that you were taken from the shooting scene. The world is still looking for you.”

  Something changed behind his eyes. She may have scored a hit.

  “So, here’s the choice you have to make,” she continued. “You already know how the current landlord wants to treat you. This is not nearly as bad as it can get. Or, you can cooperate a little and you get morphine and antibiotics to take the edge off the awfulness. Either way, you’re going to die here. Do you want to pass in your sleep, or do you want to go out screaming for your mother?”

  Chapter Seven

  “The chopper will be here in forty minutes with a medical team,” Jonathan said as he clicked off and slid his phone into his pocket.

  Ray looked both impressed and confused. “You have air ambulances on speed dial?”

  “Doesn’t everyone?” Fact was, in Jonathan’s line of work, bad things sometimes happened to good guys—injuries that couldn’t be reported or treated through normal channels—and systems were in place to handle such things off-the-books, in total secrecy. The original purpose of these secret medical facilities was to cater to the needs of counterespionage agents back in the days of the Cold War. If a KGB informant fell ill or got himself shot, it was not acceptable to have him transported to a community hospital. The FBI would shut down the scene until their own medical teams could swoop in and take control. The same thing often happened with people in the Witness Security Program.

  The doctors and the technology were some of the best in the world, at least in part because money flowed like rivers in the world of covert ope
rators. Money kept tongues stilled. And once silence was bought, because the stakes were so high, the penalty for revealing them was extraordinary.

  “Only forty minutes?” Ray pressed. “Where are they located?”

  Jonathan pretended he didn’t hear the question. “Tell me about the crew that you and your team relieved here.” He sat on a desk, legs dangling.

  “Nothing to tell, beyond what I’ve said. We got here, they gave us a tour, and then they bugged out.”

  “Do you think they really were feds?”

  “I don’t think you’re really feds.” That came from the other member of Ray’s team, who sat in a chair in the corner.

  “I didn’t catch your name,” Boxers said. The subtext from his tone was, sit quietly and shut the hell up.

  The man stood. “I didn’t offer one,” he said. “But since you asked so nicely, you can call me Walter.”

  “I don’t believe you’re really feds, either,” Ray said.

  “Not the question I asked,” Jonathan said.

  “They had badges,” Ray said. His frustration was building. “They flashed and they talked their talk, but they didn’t have the swagger that Feebs have.” He paused for effect. “Neither do you.”

  “You’re going to hurt my feelings,” Boxers said.

  Ray ignored him. “They told us essentially to let Masterson die.”

  “Why didn’t they just kill him?” Jonathan asked.

  Ray answered with an extended shrug.

  An electric bell erupted and made Jonathan jump a foot. It was the same sound as class change, back when he was in high school. “What the hell!”

  Ray looked concerned as he shot to his feet and spun around to look at his computer terminal. “Visitors,” he said. “Heading toward the front gate.”

  “Is that a problem?” Boxers asked. He moved to the window.

  Jonathan caught the glances exchanged between Ray and Walter. They knew something.

  “Talk to me, guys,” Jonathan said.

  “No visitors in weeks,” Ray said. “Now, two sets in the same day. Wouldn’t that seem odd to you if you were in my shoes?”

  Hairs rose on the back of Jonathan’s neck. “Yeah,” he said. “That would seem very odd.”

  “What’s really going on, Agent Bonner?” Ray asked.

  Across the room, Walter’s hand inched toward the pistol on his hip.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Boxers said. “We’re the good guys here.”

  “Spoken like a calm bad guy,” Ray said.

  Jonathan extended both hands, as if stopping two-way traffic. “Everybody, just cool it,” he said. “Let’s see what happens.”

  Jonathan raced through his options. Whoever was on the way, they were not going to be happy with the plan to bring medical assistance to the man they wanted to be dead. Jonathan had no intention of leaving without some humanity injected into the place.

  “Tell you what,” Jonathan said. “Tell your man at the gate not to let them pass.”

  Walter recoiled from that suggestion. “What will that do?”

  “I don’t know. Buy us some time, maybe.”

  “Your chopper gets here in forty minutes?” Ray said. “There’s no way you can buy that much time.”

  “Why not?” Jonathan asked. “What are they going to do, shoot their way in?”

  Ray heaved an enormous sigh. “You know, you’re going to throw this big wrench into the gears, and then you’re going to drive off, and me and my team are going to be left with the mess.”

  “You didn’t really like this gig all that much, anyway, did you?” Jonathan asked with a smile.

  Ray’s shoulders sagged. “Goddammit, I hate every bit of this.” He picked up the phone and punched in four numbers. “Hey, Grant. We’ve got visitors coming. Don’t let them in.” He listened. “Don’t you worry about that. That’s my job. You just keep them at bay. Tell them that you have to get permission from me and that you can’t find me.”

  Ray didn’t wait for an answer, but rather hung up abruptly. “Okay, Agent Bonner, what’s our next move?”

  “You have cameras on that entrance, right?”

  “Shit, we’ve got cameras everywhere.”

  “Let’s watch how they react,” Jonathan said. “You got audio, too?”

  “What, are you kidding?” Walter joked. “This place was built with tax dollars. The government may not spend smart, but at least they spend big.”

  Jonathan shot a look to Ray. That was a lot of talking out of a guy who hadn’t said much of anything.

  “The electronics are Walter’s specialty,” Ray said.

  “I do like to play with my toys,” Walter confirmed. Short and stocky, he moved with a certain elegance as he pivoted back around to the desk he’d been occupying. “It’s better if you come around here,” he said, and he pivoted his screen a little to make it more visible. He hit a key, and the speakers came to life.

  The screen showed four angles on the same spot, the images arranged in a grid on the twenty-four-inch monitor. The upper left of the screen showed an elevated view, straight on into the windshield, and the upper right showed a similar view, but from behind. The lower left and right panels showed those respective sides, also from an elevated view.

  They’d just gathered around the screen when a vehicle appeared. And then another. Two SUVs with darkened windows.

  “They sure look like Fibbie vehicles,” Boxers said.

  The gate guard stepped forward and motioned for the driver to roll down his window. As the glass descended into the door panel, the guard leaned in a little. “Afternoon, folks. I’m afraid . . . oh, shit!”

  The guard jumped backward as he moved his M4 up to a shooting position, but he never made it. An unseen gun from inside the vehicle barked three times, and the guard dropped in his own shadow. A second guard, positioned on the passenger side, seemed to be stunned into stillness for a second or two, and by the time he got his shit together, it was too late. Four more bullets brought him down.

  “Holy shit!” Ray yelled.

  “Long guns are all in the Suburban, Boss,” Boxers said.

  Jonathan drew his Colt. “Are these doors locked down?”

  “They’ve got locks,” Ray confirmed, “but they’re not what I’d call secure.”

  “Then move,” Jonathan said. “We don’t want to let ourselves be killed with a single grenade.” He pointed a finger at Walter. “Secure the prison doors.”

  “What about your friend?”

  Jonathan glanced at a different monitor, saw Gail scrambling up the stairs. “She must have heard the shots. When she’s clear, you lock those doors down.”

  He watched as Walter typed in a code and the heavy steel doors closed. “What’s that code?”

  “Not your business.”

  “We don’t know who’s going to live and who’s not,” Jonathan explained.

  “Sounds like we need to keep me safe, then, doesn’t it?” Walter said with a fake smile.

  The gate camera showed a man in tactical gear taking bolt cutters to the fence.

  “Is that enough leverage to get through the lock?” Jonathan asked.

  “No way,” Walter said.

  “Good. That will buy us some time.” Jonathan turned to Ray, but the other man was beelining toward an internal door. “Hey, Ray, you said there’s a weapons locker?”

  “Way ahead of you,” Ray said over his shoulder. “Follow me. Walter, I’ll bring you a rifle. Keep an eye on the cameras.”

  Ray led the way into what might have been a den if the building were really a house and over to a steel gun cabinet that had to be five feet wide and stretched from the floor to the ceiling. Jonathan stayed out of his way as the man spun the combination dial, turned the lock, and then pulled the door open.

  “Looks like they’ve got C4!” Walter yelled from the other room. “They’re going to blow the lock.”

  Gail stood in the doorway. “What the hell is going on? What’s all the shooting?
”

  “We’re under assault,” Jonathan said. It was as much explanation as they had time for and pretty much said everything anyone needed to know.

  Ray pulled a ballistic vest out of the cabinet and handed it to Jonathan, who tossed it to Gail. “This one’s for you.”

  A second one came out, and Jonathan did the math in his head. There was no way they’d have a vest big enough for Boxers. So, if he was going unprotected, Jonathan was going along. “Just a chest rig with ammo for me and Big Guy,” he said.

  “Put it on, Boss,” Boxers said. “I was born bulletproof.”

  An explosion shook the building, and then a second one knocked out the electricity. An emergency generator kicked on somewhere outside.

  “They’re inside the wire!” Walter yelled, and he appeared in the doorway.

  Jonathan tossed him an M4 as soon as Ray had placed it in his hand, and the second one went to Gail.

  Ray handed one to Boxers, a final one to Jonathan, and kept the last for himself.

  “Ammo,” Boxers said.

  Chest rigs were a kind of vest, designed to hold ten or more thirty-round magazines. They could be worn by themselves, or they could be slid over ballistic armor. Jonathan handed a rig to Boxers and lifted another one over his own head, extended his arms, and let the ammo carrier slide into place.

  “Watch the doors and windows,” Jonathan said. “Don’t let anyone inside.”

  “This is a bad place to be, Boss,” Boxers said. “We can’t maneuver. They can wait and smoke us out.”

  “Then we need to smoke them first,” Jonathan said. He worked the bolt on the M4 to chamber a round and thumbed the fire selector from SAFE to SINGLE-FIRE. “Reinforced doors?”

  Ray shook his head. “Never thought—”

  From the front room, the air shook with the staccato boom of an M4 on full-auto. “They’re at the door!” Walter yelled, and then he slid into the weapons room. “Looks like five guys.” He fired a burst around the corner.