by James Hunt
Joza looked at Links and then gestured to Grant. “Fetch, boy.”
Links approached with slow strides of defiance, and Grant’s heart hammered faster. Sam’s signal to shoot was the moment they confirmed the money and before they had a chance to shoot Mocks or him.
Links stopped a few feet short of Grant and held out his hand, forcing Grant to meet him the rest of the way. He obliged, the laptop extended, but when Links took hold of it and tried to pull it away, Grant kept hold of his end.
“Time to give it up, Grant,” Links said. “Unless you want your partner’s baby spilled out onto the concrete.”
“Is this what you really want?” Grant asked, keeping his voice low. “This is how you want to be remembered after all of those years working for the government, working for the people?”
“We don’t get to choose how people remember us,” Links answered. “You should know that better than anyone. What did your years of service mean to the people after those women died? Hmm? What did all of those hours at work mean to your boss when you defied him?” Links leaned forward. “It didn’t mean shit. I don’t care how they remember me. I want to live.” He yanked at the laptop harder, and Grant finally let go.
Links turned slowly but walked back to Joza quickly, opening the laptop on the way, no doubt waiting for the system to load.
Grant shifted and fidgeted uneasily. The glow from the computer screen illuminated Links’s face, and after a minute, he leaned over to Joza, whispering something in his ear that made Joza smile and then break out into hearty laughter.
“You really are a man of your word!” Joza clapped, and Grant did a quick count of the men armed with assault rifles. There were eight. “It’s good for a man to keep his word in society.” He held up his fists. “It creates balance, trust.” The smile faded, and he dropped his fists and reached inside his jacket.
When Joza removed a pistol and aimed it at Mocks’s head, the first gunshot rang out and dropped the man closest to Joza. The bullet entered the left side of his head and jerked it violently in the opposite direction.
In the same instance, Grant reached for his own pistol then fired on the wings of Joza’s guard, shooting one of them on the far right. He charged forward, squeezing the trigger repeatedly as Sam provided cover from the east.
The sudden attack pushed the survivors back, all their gunfire directed at Grant as Mocks scrambled to her feet, head ducked low, fleeing as fast as she could.
“Come on, come on!” Grant was relentless in his assault, never a break in squeezing the trigger. He stretched out his hand, reaching for Mocks, and the moment their fingers interlaced, he pulled her to the nearest rusted dumpster for cover.
Mocks kept her hands on her stomach, and the bullets thumped against the dumpster, ringing loudly. Grant pivoted around the corner, returning fire while he heard the thunderous shots of Sam’s rifle echo above.
“Grant!” Mocks said, grabbing hold of his shoulder. “We have to get out of here, now!”
He spun around, ejected his empty magazine, then reloaded. “You go. If I can bring Joza and Links back in, it’ll help clear Sam’s name.”
Mocks struggled to catch her breath. “I figured that was her.”
Grant removed another pistol from his waistband and handed it to Mocks. “Take this.” He then removed his phone and shoved it into her other hand. “There’s an auto repair shop half a mile south of here, just through those trees. Call Hickem and let him know where we are, and then keep going as far away from this place as you can.”
“Grant, I can’t—”
He gripped Mocks by the shoulders. “I’m not asking.” He looked down at her stomach. “Now go.”
Hesitation spread across her face, but he knew that deep down she understood. She had a future. Her son had a future.
Without warning, Mocks kissed Grant on the lips, and when she pulled back, she kept her hands on his cheeks. “You come back. You hear me? Come back alive.”
Grant nodded and then watched as Mocks disappeared into the trees. As he watched her go, all of that guilt and anxiousness flooded out of him, and all that remained was hot anger. Anger because of what he’d done to the people he’d cared about, and anger toward the ones responsible for harming them.
Sam had found the highest ground with the clearest view of the warehouse’s south side that she could scavenge. It was on a hill to the east of the trees that separated the warehouse and the repair shop where she met Grant.
The vantage point allowed her to see either side of the building, allowing her to cover nearly three exits instead of only one.
She spotted the black SUVs on the east end, which she was betting were Joza’s cars. If they decided to run, she had a clear shot at their getaway vehicles. Once she was in position, she let Grant know and then hunkered down for the long wait, her vision narrowing to the crosshairs of her scope.
The lens magnified her sight and thrust her to the front double doors. She worked on her movement, sliding to her left and right to find the other exits, practicing the motion until she was comfortable with her speed. She brought the other magazines up and spaced them out so they were easy for her to reach and reload.
When Grant came into the view of the scope in the parking lot, her heart was hammering as though she were in a sprint. She followed him in the crosshairs, knowing that if he went down, then Mocks would die too.
But she had to keep reminding herself that Mocks was the priority. She was hell bent on keeping her promise to Grant. She wasn’t going to let her die, no matter what.
Sam heard Grant’s scream from her position, his voice angry and defiant in the night. She waited for Joza and the others to step outside, praying that they wouldn’t make him go into the structure. The windows on the warehouse walls were too high and close to the ceiling. She wouldn’t have a shot if they forced Grant inside. She’d have to move.
But when Joza stepped out of the doors with his thugs, Sam breathed a sigh of relief. She kept a bead on Joza and then on Mocks as she was dragged from the warehouse. Aside from a little dirt and fatigue, she looked unharmed.
Sam took a breath and let her body relax. Her mind became aware of only her finger on the trigger and the target in her sights. Everything else faded away. She slowed her breathing and calmed her heart rate.
Accuracy was all about precision, and you couldn’t be precise if you were nervous. There needed to be confidence in your movements, and your movements needed to be guided by purpose. Without purpose, there was no action.
Links came out of the doors next, and then he walked over to Grant and grabbed the laptop from him and took it back. Sam remained calm, even though she knew the moment was drawing near.
The crosshairs fell onto the man nearest to Joza. She figured if one of them was going to make a move, then it would be him.
Sam watched the conversations through the scope. She couldn’t read lips, but she had an idea of the few choice words the pair had selected. And then, when Joza removed his pistol from his jacket, Sam squeezed the trigger.
The body dropped, and she pulled back the bolt to reload as she pivoted her aim to another thug. The crosshairs lined up on a dumbfounded thug, who scoured the horizon for the hidden shooter, and before he realized what was coming for him, he had a matching bullet in his brain for his trouble.
After the second shot, all hell broke loose. Grant returned fire, and Mocks sprinted toward safety while Sam kept pressure on Joza and his crew, pushing them back into the warehouse. She brought two more heads into her crosshairs, dropping both of them as Mocks and Grant found safety behind a nearby dumpster.
But Sam didn’t stop shooting until Joza and Links had completed their retreat into the building. And when she saw Mocks sprint away to safety, she pivoted her aim toward the east end of the building.
“Sam, Mocks is safe,” Grant said over the radio.
“Good. I’ve got the east end covered.”
“I’m going in.”
“
Just remember—”
“Links and Joza stay alive,” Grant said.
“Watch your six. I don’t have x-ray vision up here.”
The radio clicked off, and Sam kept her sights on the exit toward the vehicles. At least fifteen yards separated the door and the escape cars. She could bring down at least two of them before they made it to the car doors. Maybe three if she was quick with her adjustments.
She thought about taking out the tires before they even arrived, but she didn’t want to alert them to her presence and scare them off. The element of surprise was her best weapon. They knew there was another shooter for sure, but they still had no idea of her location.
The wait brought with it its own challenges as she struggled not to look back to find where Mocks had run off to. But she fought through the urge, and when the doors opened on the west end of the warehouse, she opened fire.
The first thug made it halfway before Sam placed a bullet through his temple and he face-planted on the pavement.
Sam pivoted an inch to her left and found the others stopped in their tracks, two of them firing randomly in her direction, though she knew that they couldn’t see her.
The crosshairs fell dead center on the beet-red face of a bearded Russian, who screamed as he pressed his finger down on the trigger and unleashed a barrage of bullets toward her.
A quick pump of recoil against Sam’s shoulder, and the anger from the Russian disappeared as the bullet split open the top half of his skull.
She pivoted the crosshairs toward the door, where she saw Links hovering at the entrance. His gaze kept switching between the dead Russians and the cars. Joza was nowhere to be found, but Links kept looking back behind him.
“C’mon, you little shit,” Sam said, whispering to herself. “I know you want to.” She took a breath and then exhaled, the center of the crosshairs dancing around Links’s head as he kept the door over him as cover. “Do it.”
And as if Links had heard her request, he sprinted from the door, arms flailing and legs pumping wildly on his path toward the first SUV.
Sam followed his movements, guiding the crosshairs to lead her target. Her muscles calmed, her mind and body relaxed. She needed to stop him, but she couldn’t kill him. The placement had to be perfect, and she waited for her shot. She didn’t panic when he crossed the halfway point, nor when his hand touched the door handle. With his back turned, she lined up the crosshairs along his calf and pulled the trigger.
Links dropped to the pavement, his hand immediately reaching for the bloody mess that was his left leg, and Sam finally lifted her eye from the scope, surveying the carnage below in a broader scale.
Links was the only body moving among the dead, and Sam rose to her feet then heaved the rifle up on her descent to the parking lot, which triggered tiny avalanches of loose dirt.
Still trying to escape, Links reached for the door handle, smearing blood along the door, but couldn’t reach. When Sam hovered over him with the rifle aimed at his head, Links finally gave up.
“Keeping me alive?” Links trembled as he closed his eyes and lay flat on his back. “Smart. It’ll help buy you out of whatever mess that got you into this trouble in the first place.”
“Good for me,” Sam replied. “Bad for you.”
Links laughed, and a cold sweat broke out on his forehead. “Bad for everyone.” He opened his eyes and didn’t even have enough strength to lift his head from the pavement. “What do you think they’re going to do to me when you bring me in? Huh? You think—Gah.” He reached for his calf and then shut his eyes again, shaking.
“It doesn’t matter what you say,” Sam said, gun still pointed at him with her finger on the trigger. “There isn’t any talking your way out of this.”
“Maybe not with you.” Links lay still save for the occasional spasm of pain. “I’ve been with the FBI a long time. I know their secrets. I know their weaknesses. You don’t think I have contingencies if I was ever caught?” He laughed, but it was cut short by a sharp round of coughing.
Sam stepped closer and pressed the end of her rifle against Links’s forehead. “I bet it’d be hard to talk with a bullet in your head.”
“It would,” Links replied. “But is that what you’re going to do? I’m your ticket home. Are you really going to throw it away?”
“What lies could you spin?” Sam asked, weighing her freedom over the cost of killing the piece of scum that she had beneath her boot. “How many others would you kill to save your own skin?”
“As many as it takes,” Links answered. “And I’ll do it without the hesitation you’re showing now. Because I want to live. Do you?”
A thousand different scenarios raced through Sam’s mind, but all of them revolved around Links’s life. Dead or alive, there were consequences, but could she let him live to save herself? Could she let this deadly spider spin more webs, cost more lives?
“And what about Grant?” Links asked. “You kill me, and he’ll be locked away for sure. I think you can trust my opinion when I tell you that treason isn’t something our government takes very lightly. Especially with the public attention that this case has received.”
“Shut up,” Sam said, pressing the barrel harder against his skull.
Gunshots fired inside, and Sam turned toward the doors.
“He’s as good as dead in there,” Links said. “So what are you going to do, Marshal? What path are you going to take?”
Sam’s heart raced faster with every gunshot. She wanted to kill him. She knew everything that he said was true. His life might grant Sam and Grant their freedom, but his death would prevent him from leveraging the system for his own benefit, and it prevented the deaths of more innocent lives.
“Tick tock,” Links said, his cheeks going pale from blood loss. “Time’s running out.”
Grant inched toward the edge of the dumpster, the barrage of enemy fire dying down. He craned his head around the side and saw four dead bodies on the ground, which meant that Joza’s personal army had shrunk to four.
Three deep breaths, and Grant spun from the cover of the dumpster, pistol raised, and he managed to fire off one shot before the double doors to the warehouse closed and Joza and his men finished their retreat inside.
Slammed up against the wall near the doors, Grant slowly reached for the door handle then pushed it open. In the same motion, he slid inside, shifting toward the darkness, his only means of cover. A table and chairs sat in the middle of the room, but aside from a few other old stacks of crates, there wasn’t anything or anyone else inside.
Grant moved quickly across the open floor, knowing it wouldn’t be long before Sam opened fire. If she couldn’t get them to sprint back, then both of them would have to face the music.
Gunfire echoed outside. It was low at first and then heightened into a hailstorm with the thugs’ retaliatory gunshots.
Grant kept low by the door, waiting for Sam to flush them back inside, and when he heard the shouts coming from the door, he raised his pistol, poised to fire.
The first man burst inside, his attention focused on the hallway where he’d just left from, and then two more piled inside, and Grant lined up the nearest thug’s head with his sight and squeezed the trigger.
The thug’s head popped back, and Grant already had his aim on the second target when both men turned. He squeezed the trigger, and again the shooter’s head jerked back, and he collapsed to the floor.
The third shooter opened fire, and just when Grant lined up his shot, he felt hot burning pain tear through his side. He fired, and the barrage of bullets from the third man ended, and the man dropped to the floor.
With the pain in his side, Grant spun to the wall, palm on the wound, where he felt the warmth and stickiness of blood. “Shit.” He stood and kept his back against the wall as he made his way toward the door.
Whispers filtered from the other side, and Grant knew there were only Links, Joza, and a thug left to deal with. “It’s over!” Grant’s voice cracked
as he screamed. “You’re surrounded, and more authorities are on their way.”
Grant lingered by the door’s edge, the blood spreading from the dead men’s heads growing in the silence.
Gunfire broke the quiet and forced Grant to retreat from the door. He’d made it all the way to a stack of crates when Joza burst through the entrance, wielding an AK-47 and refusing to take his finger off the trigger.
The bullets tore apart the flimsy wood of the stack of crates, and Grant could do little but duck and pray.
When the barrage finally ended, the din of gunshots was replaced by Joza’s voice. “You think you’ve won?” Joza screamed. “You think you’ve beaten me?” He squeezed the trigger again, this time causing the top half of the crate structure to collapse, and forcing Grant to remain on his knees.
Bullet casings hit the floor, and Joza finally let his finger off the trigger. “I will not be defeated by you! I am Anton Joza! I will fight until my last breath.”
Grant paused to listen, hearing Joza coming up on his right, which meant Grant could circle around to the left. He moved quickly, and it only took four steps before he made it around the crates, and Joza tried to pivot toward him, but it was too late. Grant fired, winging Joza on the shoulder and dropping him to the floor.
He rushed over and kicked the rifle out of the big man’s hands and put his foot on the wound, keeping the pistol trained on Joza’s face. “Don’t move, asshole.”
Joza writhed on the floor and spit blood on Grant’s leg. “You don’t want to kill me?” He smiled then laughed. “You know, I was the one who had the bitch cut. I think it may have hit the kid.”
Grant dropped to a knee and pressed the barrel of the gun into Joza’s forehead. The man was a monster. And Grant had killed monsters before. It was easy. Just a quick pull of his finger, and the world would never have to worry about Anton Joza again.
“I don’t fear death,” Joza said. “Go on. Do it. Or I’ll just keep sending more men after that woman and that little bastard living in her stomach. I’ll send men after you. I’ll kill everyone you love. It won’t end. Do it!”
