Everyone stood looking at Bill in wonder. He had a way of talking about him that one didn’t expect to hear out of the mouth of someone so obviously a farmer in the hills of Iowa.
“Well, Bill, I happen to be in luck because just such a man with me,” John said. “In fact, that’s him right there. If you could tell him where to go get that machine gun so he could start to haul it here and get it all set up in the turret that would be great.”
Bill waddled around one of the cars to stand in front of Seth.
“Is that true, son?” Bill asked. “Are you a United States Marine?”
“That I am, sir,” Seth said respectfully.
“Well oorah,” Bill said. “So am I. I was a Machine Gunner in the Corps many years ago, back in Vietnam. Fought in I Corps. Do you know anything about the war?”
“Yes sir,” Seth said. “And if you fought in I Corps than you got in some serious shit.”
“You better fucking believe I did, sonny boy,” Bill said with a smile on his face. “I’ve killed more people than you’ll fuck in your lifetime. Now you just wait here, I’ll be back with the gun. You know what? Better yet, you’d better climb up in that turret and wait for me so I can hand it to you when I get back.”
Everyone piled into the trucks, with John driving the one with the turret, Seth in the turret, Wiz in the passenger seat of that one and everyone else in the other. Seth got the distinct feeling that the other vehicle was coming along just to mop up, and that he would be doing most of the slaying. In a few minutes time Bill lumbered back into the barn and handed Seth the heavy fifty caliber receiver, then the heavy barrel of the weapon.
“Shoot well,” was all Bill said before he turned to leave.
Without any further pomp or circumstance John pulled out of the barn and the other vehicle followed a short distance behind.
“What if the police see us?” Seth yelled down into the vehicle.
“Let’s hope they don’t,” John yelled back.
They drove back into town and started heading for the airport. Seth found himself wishing that he had said some kind of prayer before they had left the barn. In Iraq he had always prayed as they left the wire, even though he didn’t believe in any God. It just made him feel better somehow, to think that some stray bullet shot from the weapon of a child wasn’t enough to drop someone like him. Seth liked to think of himself as a strong person, someone that could be called a man, but he knew very well that he could die just as easily as anyone else. He also knew that he had no idea what to expect once they go to the airport tarmac.
“You ready?” Wiz yelled from the passenger seat up to Seth.
“Yeah,” Seth said. “Kill ‘em all, right?”
“You’re God damn right,” John said. “No prisoners today. We’ll let the almighty sort these ones out. That’s how he intended it, anyway. None of this belly aching about trials, or due process, or evidence or any of that shit show that happens in the judicial system. Just good old fashioned justice. The kind you can shake a stick at.”
Seth had heard such fevered talk before, it usually came out of the mouths of men riding into combat who had been there before. Men who had seen their friends and comrades bleed out on the ground of some far away battlefield as they screamed for their mothers. Men who had seen what men looked like after they had broken in the face of death, blanched in the face of defeat. Seth smiled as he heard John going on from the driver’s seat. The airport was in sight and they pulled off of the road, went over a brief patch of grass and ended up rolling along one of the landing strips.
“Half load!” Seth screamed as he racked the charging handle on the receiver back once, moving a round in position to be seated on the bolt face of the weapon. He racked the charging handle one more time. “Full load! Gun up!”
Ahead of them on the tarmac a little jet was unloading boxes with half a dozen men or so standing around looking at the plane. It was fairly clear by how they were acting all shifty that these were the men they were here for. One of the men must have seen them and the men either made a break for the airport itself, or hid behind the boxes.
“Give it to them!” John screamed from the driver’s seat. “Give it to those mother fuckers! Wooo! Let them fucking have it, those Godless sons of bitches!”
Seth felt something thumping in his hands, saw something flashing in front of his face, but didn’t realize for a few seconds that it was the machine gun in his hands going to work. Without thinking he had pressed down on the space trigger on the back of the weapon with his thumb. Now it was like someone else was gentle sweeping the arch of traces across the running men’s forms.
One of the men disintegrated as he ran, something Seth had seen many times over in Iraq. One of the other men tumbled and fell as one of his legs disappeared out from underneath him. For a moment Seth worried the last man of the three that had made a break for the airport itself might have a chance of making it, but then the man’s head fragmented into a million little pieces and his corpse tumbled onto the ground.
“Nice shooting!” John screamed as he drove the car straight for the small jet. “Keep shooting! Keep it on them! We are about to take heavy fire.”
As if on cue a few men hiding behind the boxes opened up with machine guns of their own, albeit much smaller in caliber. The bullets raked Seth’s car and the car following them. Seth didn’t have time to look back and make sure that Jen was all right, had to make sure that he kept fire on the boxes, the men behind them and the plane. The little jet looked like it was trying to fire up its engines but was having problems.
“Light the fucking jet up!” John bellowed. “Light that mother fucker up!”
Seth swept the tracers back and forth across the jet, knocking enormous holes out the opposite side the bullets went in and starting several fires. The crates the men had hid behind were on fire as well. Then the machine gun went dry.
“I’m out of fucking ammo!” Seth screamed as he dropped into the cab of the car from the turret. “Guess we’ll finish them the old fashioned way.”
John gunned the car close to the crates and slammed on the brakes.
“Let’s do this,” he said as he threw his door open and poured fire on the men scrambling to get better cover behind the boxes strewn about.
Wiz threw his door open and started firing as well, then stopped to sprint forward and dive to the side of one of the crates a man was taking cover behind. When the man stood up to shoot Wiz he was caught by one of Seth’s bullets.
“Oh yeah!” John bellowed. “Come on now, mother fuckers. This is what we came for!”
Soon Mike and Nate were by Seth firing away at the men behind the crates, but soon they too had to make a break for them like Wiz had.
“Hey, what happened to John’s shooting?” Seth asked, looking back toward where John had been shooting from behind the door of the armored car. “You think he got greased?”
“Fuck if I know,” Mike said. “That crazy fuck had it coming if he did.”
Bullets whined over them and bounced off the concrete around them, leaving behind divots and deep scars.
One of the men broke cover from the crates and came running up to where the three tattoo artists were taking cover.
“I’ve got him,” Wiz said as he popped his head up to take a shot.
Wiz’s head snapped back and he fell to the ground, limp and bleeding.
“Wiz!” Nate screamed as he held his friend in his arms. “Wiz! No man! Don’t go! You’re gonna make it!”
Seth turned away from the heart-wrenching scene in time to put a bullet in the head of the man that had killed Wiz.
“Those mother fuckers!” screamed Mike as he stood.
“Mike, what are you doing?” Seth yelled.
But Mike wasn’t listening. With complete disregard for his safety he broke cover and sprinted toward the two remaining men hiding behind the smoking, charred remains of a crate. The men were reloading their weapons and were caught completely unawares. Mike wast
ed no time in putting a bullet in their heads.
Back at the armored car everyone stood in a semi-circle over the brainless body of John. While laying down covering fire he had caught one right through the eye and it had drug his brain out the back of his head.
“Well, shit,” Mike said. “What the fuck do we do now?”
“Is Jen all right?” Seth asked.
“Yeah, she’s fine,” Nate said. “She stayed in the car like we told her to. But you know who isn’t? The mother fucking Wizard, that’s who.”
“Went out like a bad mother fucker, though,” Mike said. “Couldn’t have picked a better way to go, if you ask me.”
“Maybe,” Nate said. “I’d have rather had him not go at all, though.”
Flashing squad cars were blazing toward them from the airport. Everyone looked at each other knowing things were about to get rough and they would have a lot of explaining to do.
“What should we tell them?” Seth asked.
Jen had shuffled over from the other car looking like she’d been terrified that Seth would die in the firefight.
“We tell them the whole thing, front to back,” Mike said. “They are going to have us under lock and key for awhile, grilling us about what the fuck really went on with this whole thing. Eventually they are going to get the whole story anyway, so we might as well just be up front about it.”
“It’s settled then,” Nate said.
The police stuffed them in to their squad cars and took them downtown. Surprisingly enough they all found out that John hadn’t been lying about being in the NSA, that he had in fact just that morning called his superiors and told them exactly what was going on. What John hadn’t told them was that the crates at the airport had contained some kind of biological weapons agent the terrorists had planned on using in some scheme.
“I can’t believe I’m saying this,” the police chief said. “But you people are fucking heroes.”
The group of them were being released out the back of the Des Moines Police Station. Each of them looked tired and worn out.
“Well, thanks officer,” Mike said. “I’d like to think I’m a real nice guy, know what I mean?”
The chief laughed.
“I know it’s a strange thing to think about, you guys being heroes,” he said. “But I’m being serious. If you hadn’t helped that NSA government man he wouldn’t have had a chance in hell. And if he’d have come to us we would have moved too slow, sorry to say. It’s just one of those things I guess. Kind of like fate.”
“Kind of,” Nate said. “Can we get a ride back to our shop?”
Without saying anything the cop turned and walked back inside.
“Fucking cops,” Nate said. “This is why I don’t like them. One second we are the best people in the fucking universe, the next they are making us call a fucking cab to get the fuck out of here. Do you think Des Moines is entirely safe at night? It isn’t.”
Seth turned to Jen and pulled her close.
“You know,” Seth said. “I was serious when I said that we should build another dojang together.”
Jen looked up at him hopefully.
“Are you serious,” she asked. “Would you really be willing to do that with me?”
“I’d have to work it in with my apprenticeship….”
Mike interrupted.
“God damn right you will,” he said.
“But,” Seth continued. “Yes, I really do want to. I know how much running a dojang means to you and I know how much you miss your family. I really do care about you and I think we should build another one together. John seems like the kind of guy that wouldn’t bullshit you about writing something to the insurance company that would insure they paid up.”
“I hope so,” Jen said. “I really do.”
Turning away from the cop shop the group started walking in the general direction of the shop. Nate bitched up a storm that they were going to have to walk over fifty blocks uphill, but Seth couldn’t help but smile hearing it. He looked over at the woman holding his hand and felt like the luckiest man on the planet.
Seth only hoped he could make her proud in the future.
~ END ~
Knights Templar (Sean) Page 15
