Renewal 5 - an Untimely Fall

by Jf Perkins

  “You take it, bug guy. I think this gate is yours now. I’ll take the roof on the far side.” Nick gave his friend a chuck on the shoulder and waited while Seth collected his gear.

  Terry had been crawling forever. He was tired; so tired in fact, that he was having a persistent daydream about simply standing up and shooting everyone in sight, but he had made it this far, and although he tried to stay alert, he was rapidly closing his awareness down to the next bush, the next move, the next freaking inch of ground.

  John took the riskiest truck first. It was closest to the corner of the building. He prided himself on his creativity, and although he was a man on a mission, he intended to use a different method to disable each one of the vehicles. The assholes will never figure it out, was his rationale. The first truck got a sharp knife into the wiring under the dashboard. The only hard part was opening the door without making too much noise. It was a good method, because the old slashed tire trick would be visible to half the yard. He saved that for the second truck, but instead of slashing the tires, he took a valve tool from his pocket and simply unscrewed the tire valves on the right side until the air leaked out in a low hiss. When the tires were flat, he removed the valves completely, and stuffed them in a vest pocket. The third truck was a big, heavy duty model. He slid underneath and used a set of wrenches to disconnect the back end of the drive shaft, which he lowered gently to the ground.

  He was about to crawl out from under the truck when the large garage door began to open. John used the two seconds he had available to wedge himself behind the big double tires and to draw his automatic, aiming it in the general direction of the door. The door made a lot of noise, which covered his movements, but also made him wince nervously, as he expected a crowd to form around it. Instead, a single pair of oily boots and stained blue cuffs walked out the door. John peered into the dark space inside and saw another man working on a pickup truck with the aid of a shop light hanging from the open hood. He understood that these two were stripping the state vehicles down to parts, which were easier to transport than entire vehicles.

  The first man started the truck and rapidly maneuvered it into the empty bay inside. John was stuck. With the big door open, he would need time when the men were buried in their work to move past the door, much less get inside. He gave up on his artistic aspirations and resorted to a quick job of tire slashing on the remaining vehicles. He hated it, since good tires were not so easy to find, but his needs were pressing.

  With the road escape handled, John waited for another opportunity to sneak into the garage. He worked several angles outside to make sure that there were only two men in sight, and made his move. He slid around the left side of the door opening, and made his way quickly into the dark corner, behind an old tire balancing machine. He took a few slow, deep breaths and leaned out to see his quarry. The original man was almost directly in front of the door, some thirty feet away. The other man was closer, but at the moment, was on the far side of his partially disassembled SUV. John waited. He needed man number one to be facing the far wall, and man number two to face in the same direction, but on John’s side of the SUV. Finally, after John had enough time to sneak up, under cover of a sloppy collection of tool cabinets and car parts, the men obliged him. He wasted no time. The first man, ironically named man number two in John’s head, lost his life to a knife across the throat, the noise muffled by John’s hand covering the nose and mouth, and his sleeve on the gaping wound.

  Danger caught the senses of the second man (man number one) and he turned. His partner had disappeared from view, and he stepped over to check when John’s hands shot out from under the SUV, grabbed a pair of ankles, and yanked so hard that the man died from the back of his head hitting the concrete floor with a sickening crunch. Just to be sure, John followed with a quick stab to the man’s groin, severing the femoral artery. The blood didn’t spray. It was over.

  Jeffry was still recovering from the run, but for a sharpshooter, he was in heaven. He had found an old concrete mixing yard, with convenient fifty foot tall towers. He settled in on top of one that gave him a fantastic view of the docks across the river. Between the tall wheelhouses on the tugboats, he had a complete view of the river face of the yard where the enemy was loading the barge. The only drawback was that every shot would fly right over the heads of the imprisoned state police. He mentally shrugged. The range was about half of his effective maximum. If he couldn’t hit from here, Bill would have sent someone else.

  Jeffry took his time preparing. He unfolded the bipod legs and checked the conditions before he dialed in his sights. His heart rate was still too high to be really accurate. He breathed deeply, willing his body into the calm state he needed. He used the minutes to survey the scene. He settled into firing position, and the distant salvage yard leapt close as his eye aligned with the scope. After years of practice with this exact procedure, his body relaxed as soon as he fixed his eye on the first target. He felt the weight of what he was doing, the responsibility of making the call, setting off an entire chain of events, in which men would die. He only hoped it would be the bad men.

  He took a breath, eased it out, settled the cross hairs on his chosen target, an angry looking man standing by the door of the building, holding a metal cup in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Jeffry pegged him as the man supervising the loading procedure, head asshole in charge, and that was good enough. His entire mind on the target, he squeezed the trigger, felt the familiar kick of the heavy rifle, and became a systematic killing machine.

  Chapter 5 - 3

  Bill almost missed the opening shot. His mind was trying to work its way through the problem of these aggressive invaders back to their God-forsaken home, when the sniper round passed through the man by the door and punched into the metal shell of the building behind him. Bill snapped his attention back to the moment, and watched in amazement as Jeffry’s shots came in at two second-intervals, creating a brutal stew of bodies across the dock. The deep rolling thunder of the rifle rolled across the water in pursuit of the high velocity projectiles. At the rate he was going, Bill could sit here and watch Jeffry do all the work.

  The enemy froze in confusion for long seconds of shock, as it seemed to them as if the hand of God was smiting them at will. Then one of the sharper ones located the approximate source of the shots and ran for cover, starting a stampede. As panic took over, they began to run in any direction that seemed better than where they were. The higher, sharper crack of new rifle fire joined the booming symphony, as Bill’s men joined the fight.

  Terry jumped up and ran for the docks. He actually passed one of the enemy running in the opposite direction just as Rob’s bullet dropped the man at his feet. Terry hopped over and kept running. By the time he reached the dock, he was the only one there. He slipped through blood and tissue, scrambling to reach the gangplank. He slid on the smooth metal walkway of the barge, and turned right, heading for the closest tugboat. He leaped over the gunwale and charged across the deck to the ladder. He took the steps two at time, threw open the wheelhouse door, and found a flannel clad man huddled on the floor, under the console. Without thinking, he kicked the man under the jaw, which was bad because he was aiming higher, and good because this was more effective. The man’s mouth slammed shut with tooth-shattering force, dazing him long enough for Terry to drag him out the door, and shove him over the rail. The man bounced once off the gunwale before dropping into the green water.

  Terry stepped back inside and studied the console. He pushed the starter button, and nothing happened. Then he saw the key in the ignition. He turned it to the right and pushed the starter again. He heard the engine cranking, but it didn’t start. Remembering Shaun, he pushed a lever forward and tried again. This time the engine caught, revved up high, vibrating the entire boat, before Terry pulled the lever back. He pushed it forward again with his thumb on a button he hadn’t realized was there, and the boat kicked into gear. He felt a sudden shift under his feet, and almost fell when
the boat ran out of slack in the lines holding it to the dock. He groaned and mentally kicked himself for forgetting about the lines, and left the wheelhouse to climb back onto the dock to cut the lines.

  Terry pulled his new knife and started sawing on the first two-inch line when a second surge of bad guys started to pour out of the building. About a second later, another group streamed up from the cabin cruiser tied to the far end of the barge. Both groups were shooting in his direction. Terry ran ten steps to the nearest end of the dock and dove headfirst into the river. He immediately climbed out of the water to get back in the fight. As he clambered over the bank, he saw that Bill was making a mess of the group from the building. They were focused on Terry, recognizing the threat of losing the boats, and failed to notice Bill until he had raked them over with fire from his assault rifle. Meanwhile, Jeffry had shifted his fire to the group from the cruiser, and while they were dropping at a steady rate, there were still plenty left to kill Terry.

  John should not have been surprised by the flailing old men who burst through the door he was about to open, and he should not have been surprised when it got him shot. He fell to the grimy concrete, and was trampled by booted feet racing for the vehicles outside. The Grand Dragon, himself, donated a free kick to John’s head as he made his escape. It was a mistake. The leadership of the white robe group piled into the driver’s side doors of the state SUV closest to the door. The driver cranked the engine, and they grinned in triumph as it roared to life.

  Seth’s rifle rounds penetrated the radiator, bending the aluminum cooling fan, which promptly wedged against the alternator bracket, creating a horrible squeal from the serpentine drive belt. The driver jammed the car into gear and jumped on the gas pedal, lifting the squealing sound to a pitch that might actually kill a dog. The slashed tires on the right slipped on the rims, and flopped against the gravel. They made it almost ten feet before Seth hit something critical in the engine compartment and the insane squealing stopped. The old bastards were thinking hard about the next vehicle in line when Seth raised his aim to the windshield, and pinned them in the SUV.

  If that were all, they might have made it, but they didn’t count on John, who holding his side against the blood loss with his left hand, walked up to the side window and shot the three men in the back seat. The driver had a neat hole punched into his neck by Seth’s rifle, which left the one. John held up his hand to Seth who stopped firing. John limped around to the fat Grand Dragon in the shotgun seat and held the gun on the old man as he waved Seth in to help.

  Bill was down. Terry felt his mind trying to disengage when he saw Bill drop, but then something else happened. Terry pulled his new handgun across his body in a cross draw that felt like someone else was in control. He shot the six remaining men from the building in exactly six shots. His mind was ignoring the fire from the boats on his right, but his body wasn’t. It moved in ways that Terry didn’t even notice. He saw targets. He shot targets. When those men were down, he turned slowly to face the remaining men from the boat, and with unreal accuracy, shot them all. When he was done, his weapon still held one round in the chamber, and the world seemed to go silent like an awkward break in conversation. To Terry, the whole process had been a leisurely matter of aiming and pulling the trigger. To the state police watching the whole fight, Terry had moved in a blur, 13 targets acquired and eliminated in less than five seconds. They talked about it for years afterwards.

  Back in normal time, Terry ran to Bill, who was flat on his back. He had been shot twice; once in the left leg, and once in the right shoulder. The leg wound was a remarkable match for the one Arturo had taken in Bill’s story.

  In his spacy post-combat state of mind, Terry started with that. “Hey, just like Arturo...” he said, looking at Bill’s bleeding leg.

  Bill was understandably grumpy. “Hey! Snap out of it and put some pressure on the damn thing!”

  Terry almost seemed to wake up. “Oh, yeah. Sorry, Bill.” He dropped to his knees and pulled out a bandana, folding it into a square and pressing it to Bill’s flowing wound. “What happened?”

  “I’m old and slow! That’s what happened,” Bill declared. “Anyway, don’t worry. These are just scratches.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “Anyway, what happened with you? I thought you only shot squirrels.”

  “I do. I just imagined those jerks holding squirrels to their chests, and shot the squirrels.”

  Bill laughed for a full minute, until his giddy celebration was broken by the sound of another big engine roaring to life. It was the cabin cruiser, which was being cast loose while Terry was attending to Bill. No warning shots from Rob, which was explained when he came running up with the first aid kit. Whatever god of war had possessed Terry earlier was gone. He fired a round at the man freeing the last tie on the cabin cruiser, missed by a mile, and then pulled the trigger three more times before he noticed the slide was locked back and the trigger was disengaged.

  “Oh, crap!” Terry yelled and starting running for the boat. Whoever was piloting the big cruiser slammed the throttles to the stops, and the yacht surged away from the dock. Terry staggered to a stop and watched it go. Jeffry’s rifle boomed again and again, but the cruiser was unharmed and rapidly disappeared down the river to the northwest.

  Terry saw a bleeding John Hall come around the building, and ran back to the yard to check on him. John was followed by his prisoner, who was under the barrel of Seth’s rifle. Rob tossed John a packet of coagulant powder, and continued to patch Bill’s wounds.

  Nick joined the rest of the crew in the salvage yard and joined Seth in watching the Grand Dragon. As he looked around, he made the obvious connection. “Hey, somebody should do something about the tugboat.” It was a case of jinxing the whole thing. Two seconds later, the half-cut line snapped and the barge began to spin in a slow circle around the one remaining line.

  Chapter 5 - 4

  Terry felt like he spent his whole day running after boats, but he sprinted off in the direction of the river once again. He jumped from the concrete pier across the eight foot span of water, and landed easily on the corner of the steel deck. He worked his way across the barge towards the running tug on the far end. By this time some of the more lively police formed Terry’s personal cheering section, pushing him along the spinning deck. Just as he dropped onto the tugboat, the whole floating assembly completed its pivot and the short end of the barge collided with the pier. Like a giant lever, the barge loaded the remaining line with an incredible strain, the cleat pulled up, warping the heavy steel underneath, and the line snapped with enough force to cut a man in half. Luckily, no one was in range of the supersonic rope, but that didn’t prevent the running tug from bouncing hard off the river bank. Terry fell face first on the tug’s metal deck, and by the time he regained his feet, the boat had slid down the bank, rotated the barge and was heading out into the channel in a slow but relentless uncontrolled spin.

  Terry was a bit stunned by his fall, but he managed to reach the wheelhouse, and pulled the throttle back to idle. Momentum kept the barge and its two tugs spinning for quite some time, but that was secondary to the fact that Terry was now drifting downstream with a barge full of State Police. Because the tug was attached at a right angle to the axis of the barge, Terry understood that there was no way to use the running tug to control it, much less move back upstream. The other tug was on the long side of the barge, and offered the possibility of control, if he could get it started. For the moment, he ignored the other problem, which was how to actually drive the beast.

  Terry climbed down, from the wheelhouse, crossed the barge to the second tugboat, and climbed into the new wheelhouse. No keys. He looked around for any potential hiding places, and found no keys.

  “Great,” he said to himself.

  He crossed the barge once more, noticing that the wayward vessel was passing under the Shelby Street Bridge. He pulled the keys from the original tug, and stuffed them into his pocket. Without an
y experience, he thought that any tugboat key would work, but ended up pounding his fist in frustration on the control console of the second. His next idea was to bypass the ignition switch, which should have been easy with the simple wiring under the open console, but if he was worried about his boat handling experience, his experience with wire amounted to the kind that was wrapped around hay bales. All he saw was a confusing tangle of wire.

  Meanwhile, Nick was giving the play by play to the rest of the crew, and was beginning to panic when the barge disappeared around the river bend two miles downstream. He chattered about chasing the boat down, and the options were few. Their best bet would involve running to the truck at the stadium, and trying to follow the boat to an unknown bridge downstream, where, according to Nick, they could drop a rope as the barge passed underneath, and use the truck to pull it to shore.

  Bill’s response was simple. “Terry will figure it out.”

  Terry had no such faith. He wasted time stringing foul language together before it occurred to him that the tug did not need to be attached to the barge to move it. He could push the barge back to the dock, in theory at least. With the new idea, he dropped out of the keyless tug’s wheelhouse, climbed onto the barge for the fiftieth time, and cast the tug loose. It took a minute of random currents to separate the tug from the barge, but as soon as he saw it begin, he ran back to the original tug, jumped onboard and cut it free from the dock. The police were gesturing and chattering wildly from the cages, trying to help, but Terry couldn’t get any clear advice from the noise.