Burning Skies_The Fall

by Ford, Devon C.

  His last memory on earth was someone pausing long enough to relieve him of his twelve-thousand-dollar watch before he took his last bubbling breath, and died.

  A fire broke out, unnaturally quickly, in the back seat of the car he had been aiming to spend the remainder of the crisis in, set off by a muted explosion. Jake didn’t see it, but he heard it as he tried desperately to get innocent people off the street and into cover. He thought he’d already seen some crazy shit today, but his nightmare was only just beginning to unfold.

  ACTIVE SHOOTER

  Friday 9:30 p.m. - Park Avenue

  Cal and the rest of the guests of the Waldorf were called to a meeting in the large restaurant. Sebastian told all the assembled guests what he knew, reiterated that they had onsite security, and told them that the plan was to hold tight until everything was back to normal.

  Questions fired at him, but Cal didn’t hear them. He turned to Louise, who regarded him quizzically.

  “Why the hell aren’t y’all more concerned about this situation, Cal?” she asked him seriously, using her individual way of employing far more words than were necessary for the sentence she spoke. His almost satisfied smile annoyed her when he answered.

  “After everything I’ve survived today, I’m just happy you’re safe and we’re holed up somewhere nice,” he told her. She shot him a tense look and turned away.

  “Excuse me? Mr. Sebastian, sir?” she called out as she held her hand aloft. Sebastian heard the sweet, honey-like voice cut through the din of questions, and nodded to her to continue.

  “Mind if I ask what the authorities say about all this?” she asked, provoking a rolling mumble of agreement amongst the other guests.

  Sebastian held his hands up for quiet so he could answer the question. He had no intention of bullshitting them.

  “There is no word from the authorities as yet,” he told them, raising his hands higher to hush the response, “and you all know the cell phone and land lines are out of service. So is the city power grid but we have backup power to last another couple of days.” His next line was cut off, as the sound of smashing glass echoed from the reception area. Cal and Louise were sat toward the back of the group closest to reception, and Cal thought that he heard the butcher’s sound of meat being tenderized, followed by the sound of something heavy hitting the deck.

  Before anyone could react, three armed men rounded the ornate archway into the restaurant and brandished their weapons.

  “Okay bitches, none of you assholes move,” declared the evident leader, a head shorter than his thugs and with an accent that told Cal he was trying hard to be American by very recent way of Eastern Europe. He remembered being told that the Polish gangs were as prevalent as the famous mobsters and mafia groups which were the stuff of film legends. Real organized crime was less Hollywood, and far more frightening in real life.

  “We are going to be wanting your jewels and your cash,” he said, taking the lit cigarette from his mouth, and dropping it onto the expensive carpet, “and don’t any of you motherfuckers try anything … heroic.” He smiled, clearly impressed with himself for his mastery of the English language.

  Cal and Louise looked to each other. Between them they probably had less than fifty dollars and no jewels to speak of. Certainly not the kind of Omega, Breitling and Cartier watches the other guests were reluctantly slipping from their shaking wrists and trying to hide, along with the diamonds hanging from the ears of the women Cal, and he was certain the gang, could see. He had been told, interestingly by someone he worked with who had never visited New York or even the States, that he should always keep his ‘robbery money’ to hand. He hadn’t bothered, on the basis that he thought the guy was full of shit, but now he saw the sense in having something tangible to hand to ward off anything like this.

  He stole a glance at the leather-jacketed, gold-chain-wearing goons who were starting to work the room. The only guns he saw were sawed-off shotguns which he knew were devastatingly brutal up close but merely frightening—okay, very frightening—at any kind of distance. Tucked in the waistband of the smaller man who had given the orders was the black plastic and chrome butt of a semi-auto pistol which Cal didn’t recognize. Not that he needed to; a gun was a gun, and he didn’t have one.

  ~

  Jake ducked his head back out of cover to snatch a glance at the building where the gunfire came from. He saw the ground floor communal door open, and a dark figure burst from it before turning left and running.

  “Gun!” he said to himself instinctively, as though he were working with backup who needed that prevalent information. A second shape popped up from between the cars having thrown an incendiary grenade into the open window of a long, black car, and followed the other.

  “NYPD!” Jake screamed as he broke cover, Glock raised and held out in front of him in two hands.

  The response was not what he was expecting, even though he wasn’t sure they would just surrender to him. As one, both shapes turned and dropped low, popping up in a different place and unleashing hell. He didn’t so much hear the gunfire as feel the stinging air pulse around him as the bullets cracked past.

  Suppressed weapons, he thought to himself, subsonic rounds.

  This intelligence update didn’t help him, as he was facing two well-armed suspects both firing automatic weapons when all he had was three mags for his service weapons and two for the smaller piece tucked in the rig under his left armpit. He dropped and rolled, taking cover behind the engine block of an abandoned cab before rising to his knee and looking for a target. They were gone, and all around him the street erupted in more chaos as the fire grew behind him and people’s screams pierced the night. He thought that someone behind him may have been hit because the screams from that direction swelled in pitch and intensity, but his priority was the shooters.

  A massive part of his training had been dedicated to this. An active shooter scenario was something that was practiced and trained to law enforcement across most of the world. He remembered, vividly, being made to sit through the footage from Mumbai where a guy with an AK and a thousand rounds of 7.62 had run riot like a one-man army until he was put down. The damage a single man or woman could do with an automatic weapon was incredible, even worse in places like the UK where most cops relied on pepper spray and a stern talking to rather than firearms. Now he was faced with an active shooter situation, without backup, and he was outgunned by not one but both shooters.

  He had sworn an oath, and he couldn’t allow himself to hide or run away.

  The problem with the war on terror in any setting, be that war or in a scenario like Jake found himself, was that of rules. Jake had to justify every pull of his trigger, and he was identifiable by his uniform. His enemy, on the other hand, wore no uniform and abided by no rules that anyone knew of. They could kill, could murder, with impunity whereas he might walk straight by an enemy combatant and not even realize. When facing those limitations and those kinds of odds, the Western world was already losing the fight.

  Except now he had a clear view of his quarry as they sprinted north. He followed, unthinkingly, only this time he didn’t announce his presence and wait to be fired on first to justify his actions. As far as he was concerned, he had already given them fair warning of who he was, and anyone in NYC who didn’t fully comprehend that firing an automatic weapon at an officer of the NYPD would result in lethal force being used against them was just plain tired of living. Or prepared for martyrdom, he thought more worryingly.

  He knew that any further verbal warnings, or pointless shouts for them to freeze, would only result in them turning and laying down more fire at him, and that would mean endangering the lives of the people running to get off the street. Keeping low, he saw the lead shadow turn and take a knee, scanning the street in his direction over a rifle barrel. Jake dropped flat, skidding on the sidewalk and losing his hat. Instinctively he reached for the radio on his shoulder, clicking the button but saying nothing. It made no noise and he rem
embered it was dead.

  He was on his own.

  ~

  Cal put his handful of cash in the bag held by the thug who appeared to have been born without a visible neck. His hackles rose as the thug’s eyebrows under his receding hairline raised when he took a closer look at Louise beside him. Cal stiffened, but Louise placed a hand on his leg and smiled as she dropped in her handful of small notes and tried to placate the brutal man. He shot one last look of warning to Cal and moved on for greater spoils.

  “Don’t even think about it,” Louise whispered to him. “Y’all ain’t big enough to take on these assholes.”

  Cal didn’t care at that moment. He was offended, deeply, right to the core of his very soul, by these goons. Taking his money was one thing, but after what he had survived today already he was sure as hell not going to get killed by some petty thieves, especially not ones who were looking at Louise like they did.

  “Gentlemen, please,” Cal heard from the front of the room, unmistakably Sebastian’s cultured tones. “I implore you not to hurt any of our guests, just take what you want and leave.”

  Cal groaned inside. As sure as he was that Sebastian had to make the attempt, he knew that the thugs would be highly unlikely to respond positively to being told to—no matter how politely it was phrased—get the fuck out. The lead thug stopped, turned toward the source of the voice, and asked him to repeat himself. Sebastian stood, straightened his jacket, and calmly asked the thugs to go about their intended business and then leave, peacefully.

  The thug smiled. “You hear that boys?” he said to his goons, laughing. “The gentleman here wishes us to leave peacefully,” he sneered, producing the oversized handgun from his waistband and waving it around the room as he spoke. He began to walk toward Sebastian slowly, waving the gun around recklessly in tune with his words as though he were directing some grotesque orchestra. “Well I regret to inform the gentleman that our business will not be concluded for some time,” he said, stepping close to Sebastian and craning his neck to look the suave man in the eye. Finding the height difference not to his liking he turned away in a feint, but spun and brought the barrel of his heavy pistol round to crack it across the smug man’s face.

  Watch this, bitches, he thought to himself triumphantly, baring his teeth with a grunt as he put all his effort into the cheap shot.

  His momentum pulled him straight through where the contact should have been, and he wasn’t rewarded with the sickening crunch he was anticipating. Instead he spun off balance, half stumbling to the floor tangled in his own feet.

  And that was when the strike hit him. It wasn’t a punch as such, wasn’t a fist hitting him as he had experienced so many times in his life, but was more like being stabbed. Incidentally, that was also something he had experienced more than once in his life, but neither occasion had prepared him for this. A single protruding knuckle impacted just to the left of his windpipe, having the instant effect of removing the last shred of control he had over his feet. Worse still, before he could fulfill the intentions of gravity and hit the plush carpeted ground, a second jab impacted his right eye and blinded him. He finally finished his uncontrolled descent and hit the carpet so hard he bounced up a little. As he spun, in between the two sniper-accurate jabs that rendered him useless, Sebastian had snatched the gun from his hand and raised it to the surprised thugs, switching the aim from one to the other.

  Confusion reigned over them, their panic evident in the glances they threw at one another. “Don’t!” Sebastian warned them. “Guns on the floor and get out,” he told them, waiting a few seconds before racking back the topslide of the weapon. A spinning brass round ejected from the port, showing that the thug already had a bullet chambered, but Sebastian wanted to make sure. He had learned long ago that the psychological effect of the action went a long way to invoke fear, like the unmistakable racking of a pump action shotgun. They both put down their guns and held up their hands.

  “And take this”—he paused and shot a sharp kick into the ribs of the moaning, insensible gangster at his feet— “gentleman with you,” he finished, earning a small giggle from the few guests not paralyzed by fear.

  Slowly, cautiously, the goons crept forward and dragged their diminutive boss with them. Sebastian followed them all the way to the shattered window they had used to admit themselves, shooting a glance at his security guard who has down and bleeding from the head. He watched as they retreated into the darkness before giving instructions to block the shattered window with furniture, for his remaining intact security guards to utilize the sawed-off shotguns they had now inherited, and for the injured man to be given medical attention, all before he furrowed his brow and thought hard about their next move. Cal found him there, flanked by Louise, still deep in thought.

  “Sebastian,” Cal said, almost waking him up from his trance.

  “Cal. Yes. Sorry?” he said, regaining his composure.

  “Um, you okay?” Cal asked him. “That was some Bruce Lee shit back there, mate …”

  “Those self-defense classes paid off I suppose,” he responded glibly with a smile which neither of them believed. “If you’ll excuse me?” he said before walking away, leaving the two with more questions than answers. They heard orders being given, polite orders but orders all the same, for people to head upstairs away from the ground floor.

  ~

  Jake had dogged the pair of shooters nearly ten blocks like a relentless bloodhound, hoping for a chance to get a shot off or to miraculously bump into some backup. Without communications, he felt totally exposed and more vulnerable than he had ever been in his life. Still, he couldn’t let these two go, he couldn’t break off his pursuit, but neither could he see a way that this could end well.

  Here am I, he recited from the book of Isaiah privately as though the words could steel his resolve and shroud him in righteous armor, send me.

  Shouts up ahead made him pop his head over the hood of the car he was using as cover, and the responding burst of automatic fire didn’t take long to zero in on his position. The noises, the pattern of their cat and mouse engagement had changed somehow, but Jake had yet to figure it out. He heard shouts again, and more muted gunfire from the suppressed weapons he would have nightmares about for the rest of his life, but none of the shots fired came in his direction this time; they were engaged to their front.

  Creeping low to the rear of a car, he sprinted across to the other side of the street without looking first so as not to give away his new position. He didn’t stop until he threw himself hard into the opposite sidewalk and tucked into cover. He hadn’t been seen, and hopefully the shooter who had taken a pop at him would not be expecting him on this side. Staying low, he moved toward the shouts and gunfire until he could hear the grunts and breathing of his suspects. Tucked in low with his back up against the front wheel of a car, Jake took three long and slow breaths to steady himself.

  Peeking out, he saw the back of one of the shooters as he took cover behind a car up ahead, easily within accurate range of his Glock. He closed his eyes momentarily and stood.

  He leveled his weapon, aiming for center mass, but couldn’t pull the trigger. Despite the crazy events, he couldn’t just execute a man in cold blood.

  “NYPD, put your weapons on the ground, NOW!” he called out, sounding less authoritative than he intended. The shooter did not comply. Simultaneously spinning and dropping to the ground, a burst of gunfire erupted over Jake’s head and missed him by a hand’s breadth. His own answering shots, two solid hits to the chest, dropped the shooter.

  He moved forward, eyes scanning ahead in fear of the second gunman. Taking a knee beside his suspect, he switched the Glock to a one-handed grip and put two fingers to the throat of the man. He felt warm skin, smooth where it should be stubbled, and glanced down. He saw two eyes wide open, not in death but alert. His own shock had no time to register this, even though body armor was something that he should’ve anticipated, and a reflected flash sparkled in front of hi
s eye as a knife came toward him.

  He had no time to disengage and use his sidearm. Had no time to issue a warning or use any of the disarming techniques he had been taught. Instead he acted instinctively, smashing the butt of his gun down on the face beside his knee. The crunch of bone sickened him, as did the sticky, metallic smell of the hot liquid on his hand, but the knife dropped with a clang to the street.

  A shout ahead, too close for comfort, made his eyes snap up and into the fat, bulbous barrel of a stubby rifle aimed at him. Jake closed his eyes, and waited for oblivion.

  AS USELESS AS THE ‘G’ IN LASAGNE

  Friday 9:30 p.m. – Washington, D.C.

  Major Taylor and his team had secured the White House along with all the senior members of staff. The president was livid, threatening each and every man with the death penalty for treason. Taylor was worried that he would start to have a negative effect on the moral of his troops, so he isolated him under the guard of two if his most trusted men.

  Taylor acted confidently, but he did not feel at all confident. The longer their secret siege went on, the higher the risks of failure were. By now, events in New York were on schedule, and already the impact on the world financial market was huge. They were crippling their own country, albeit temporarily, but they did what they did for the greater good and the long-term prosperity of their beloved United States of America.

  “Major, this is Johnson. Over,” came the squelch from his earpiece on their closed squad-net radio.

  “Go,” came the terse response.

  “Sir, the president would like to speak with you at your earliest convenience,” Johnson, an implacable if somewhat unthinking sergeant under his command, told him. It was one of the reasons he chose Johnson; he was efficient and ruthless, but lacked that extra layer of consciousness which would ever make the man question an order.