ASCENSION: THE SYSTEMIC SERIES

by Callahan, K. W.

  “I guess,” Will said. “Or just lucky.”

  Whether it was Jake’s skill, intuition, or just luck, I really didn’t care; I was just thankful to be on our way home, in one piece, and done with the whole mess. No more Jake. No more wild shootouts. Hopefully it’d just be peace and quiet from here on out.

  I began moving on in my mind, preparing for the next – and hopefully final – leg of what had been a long and extremely arduous and dangerous journey.

  CHAPTER 16

  Jake was ranting, raving, and raging around the penthouse suite, smashing things, kicking things, his generals all lined up before him.

  “First off,” he almost screamed, his pale face red, the muscles in his neck bulging, the veins rippling, “who the fuck can tell me where Ava is?”

  Spittle flew from his mouth as he spoke. He took a long drink from the bottle of tequila he grasped by its neck in a vice-like grip.

  “I think she’s working at the bank, boss,” Mad Dog offered. “She said she was going down there after you left for uh…uh, for your…”

  “Fuck ‘er!” Jake yelled, cutting off Mad Dog and swatting a small crystal lamp off the end table beside him. “We don’t need her anyway!”

  He took another long drink. “Here’s what I want you to do,” he addressed the men standing before him. “Before they have time to recover from the defeat I just handed them or prepare any sort of defense, I want Steel Will to go get the other Stryker. The rest of you round up every man who can carry a gun. We’re going to level that fucking hole they have in Little Havana.” He looked at his watch. “I want everybody back and ready to go by six. We’ll catch them at dinner.”

  “That’s not much time to plan or do recon,” the Fallback Man, said.

  “Fuck it! We don’t need fucking recon! We’ve got balls and firepower, and that’s all we need. We know where they’re all holed up at that hotel. What the fuck else we need to know? We go down there with the Strykers, level the fucking place, and kill any fucking thing that moves,” Jake sneered, alcohol confident.

  Fallback looked nervously around at the other men, but they didn’t seem fazed.

  “Here’s what I want,” Jake went on, ignoring Fallback’s concerns. He turned to a big dry erase board behind him where a childlike drawing of a street and building were drawn. On the outline of the building, the word “Hotel” was written.

  Jake wished Ava was here. She could at least have made him a nice drawing; but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that he got his ideas across and that his men understood what he wanted.

  “Our attack will take place in three parts,” Jake said. “Fallback, I want you and Switchblade to lead the way with all our armored SUVs. How many we got?” he eyeballed the Fallback Man.”

  “Eight,” Fallback answered quietly.

  “You get them filled with men, line them up along the street in front of the hotel and lay down a suppressing fire on the building – four from each direction blocking the street.” Jake drew wobbly on his board with a marker while he talked. “We don’t want any of these fucking slimeballs getting away. Steel Will, you take one of the Strykers, fill it with men; I’ll take the other. We’ll also come in from opposite directions on the street behind Fallback and Switchblade,” here and here, he drew on the board. “And we’ll blow the building to hell. Once we soften up that front entrance, Fallback and Switchblade, you get your men inside. Steel Will and I will have our men follow up as a second wave. At the same time we’re raiding the building, Mad Dog and Rambo, I want you to lead the third part of the assault bringing in any other men you can find as the clean up crew…reserve force if we need them…which we won’t.”

  It was one of Ava’s best pre-designed plans, and it had worked well with various targets in the past. They’d used it multiple times with success both in Atlanta and in their Miami takeover, but it’d never been tested against the kind of manpower and firepower that Little Havana was reported to have.

  “I want you to get every man that can carry a weapon down here and ready. The assault goes off at six.” Jake turned to Kill King. “King, you got any guys as good a shot as you?” he asked.

  “Not quite as good as me, but pretty good,” the King said.

  Jake nodded. “I want you to get them here asap. I’ve got a special mission for you.”

  “What about prisoners?” Mad Dog asked. “What do we do with them?”

  “There won’t be any prisoners,” Jake said.

  Jake took another violent swig of tequila, ramming the bottle up to his mouth so hard that it chipped a tooth. But Jake was in such an adrenaline and alcohol-fueled rage that he didn’t even notice as he swallowed the piece of tooth along with the mouthful of alcohol in one giant gulp.

  * * *

  The massive attack force rolled at exactly six o’clock in two convoys. By a quarter past six, everyone was in place and ready to go. The lead Strykers communicated through radio transmissions to coordinate the start of the attack with the two lead armored SUVs.

  Jake waited for Kill King’s confirmation that he’d arrived at his location and then made the call. “Go! Go! Go!” he called into the radio from his Stryker armored vehicle.

  He watched with exited pride, grinning devilishly as the SUVs in front of him rolled away up the street. “They have no idea what’s coming,” he said to himself. He only wished Ava was here to see it all go down. He looked down for the snapshots she had taken of him on the way down from Florida after their fuel raid, the ones of him standing over the dead man on the highway after they’d annihilated the convoy. They inspired him in situations like this. But as he gazed around the control area of the Stryker, he realized that they were missing. He frowned, wondering where the pictures had gone or who had taken them and why, but he quickly turned his attention back to watching the attack now in progress.

  Jake stared on with a mixture of anticipation and satisfaction as his SUVs rolled in perfectly-timed coordination towards one another from opposite ends of the street and came to an abrupt halt in front of the boutique-style hotel in which the heads of Little Havana lived and worked.

  The two guards out in front of the hotel didn’t stand a chance. They attempted to get back inside to the cover of the lobby but were promptly gunned down as they retreated up the hotel’s front steps.

  “Two down,” Jake said to no one in particular.

  He watched as his eight vehicles lining the street opened up with an impressive show of force, popping open armored portholes and spraying the building and surrounding area with gunfire from an array of automatic weapons. All the SUVs were armored, ringed with steel plates that Jake’s men had welded in place for additional protection. They had also welded protective plating over most of the areas housing the vital engine components and even had steel plates covering the majority of the wheel wells and tires. The added armor slowed the vehicles’ top speeds and made them more difficult to maneuver, but since they were used solely in urban and suburban environments, speed and agility weren’t as much of a concern as safety was. Each SUV also had a sunroof with steel plates welded around it with gun slits cut through them making a sort of multidirectional and stationary turret from which a man could shoot from relative cover. The majority of the windows and doors had also been covered with similarly cut plating, providing for protective firing ports.

  It was difficult for him, but Jake waited patiently, watching, and counting off two full minutes on his watch. The 120 seconds seemed like an eternity. As he watched, a portion of the men exited their SUVs and took up positions around their vehicles, waiting for his armor to come in and blast an entry for them into the hotel.

  Things were going well in this initial phase and were proceeding exactly as Jake had expected.

  Return fire from the hotel had now increased and Jake could see gun barrels and muzzle flashes coming from numerous windows within the building. Several of his initial assault team were hit and went down, but that was fine with him. He wanted to dra
w in all the flies before he started swatting them.

  Finally, he picked up his radio, “Armored units…go!”

  Mad Dog and Rambo who were waiting in the rear with the reserve forces had been instructed to follow up with their men exactly five minutes from Jake’s initial command to attack regardless of how the assault was proceeding, although Jake had little doubt regarding the success of his operation. He was so confident in fact, that he hadn’t even given them radios, choosing to spread these crucial devices out among the first few waves of attackers rather than waste them on his supporting and reserve elements.

  His Stryker armored vehicle, crammed with armed men sitting ready behind him, began to roll forward. It moved steadily into the fray, and as it neared the location of the parked SUVs, Jake could hear the delicate pitter-pat, pings, and thuds of bullets being deflected by the Stryker’s heavy armor.

  In the first few battles into which he’d rolled his beloved armored vehicles, this sound had concerned him. But with each ensuing assault, the strength of the vehicles’ armor had successfully been tested, and with each test, Jake’s confidence – and now over-confidence – had grown with it.

  It was now a sound he’d come to love. It was the sound of power.

  The armored vehicles hadn’t even come to a halt before they opened up on the hotel’s façade. Jake’s Stryker let loose with heavy machinegun fire, raking the outside of the building, spraying lines of bullet holes across its walls and pausing to concentrate a deadly accurate spray of steel at certain windows, instantly ceasing any return fire coming from those areas.

  Meanwhile, Steel Will’s Stryker launched several grenades at the closed front entry doors, which were quickly blown open and blasted off their hinges.

  As soon as these doors were open, Jake turned his Stryker’s machinegun towards the entrance, spewing forth additional fire that he hoped would clear out any remaining defenders immediately inside the area. His bullets cracked through the exterior stucco of the building and ripped into the lavishly appointed lobby, obliterating tables, shredding chairs, and ripping huge hunks of wood from the front desk, behind which several defenders dove for cover.

  Jake was having a great time, loving the destruction he was reaping and the revenge he was taking for the failed assassination attempt.

  He paused in his shooting and moved his fire pack to the hotel’s surrounding windows to allow a group of about 20 of his men to rush from in and around the armored SUVs and up towards the hotel entrance.

  In what quickly became the first miscue of the day, just as the men approached the front of the building, Steel Will’s Stryker launched another grenade directed at an upstairs window behind which sheltered a particularly pesky machine gunner. The lobbed projectile went slightly wide though, and instead of passing through the now shattered glass of the window, it hit the side of the building and ricocheted down and to the side. It landed about 20 feet from the steps leading to the hotel’s main entry and exploded a second later, sending shrapnel flying in all direction and taking out about five members of the assault team’s first wave.

  Jake didn’t like mistakes, but he recognized that his men weren’t trained soldiers, they were just guys with guns, and he was prepared to break a few eggs in the process of making an omelet.

  The explosion slowed but did not stop the frontal assault as his men sheltered in place for a moment, waiting for the smoke to clear before picking themselves up off the ground where many had thrown themselves and continuing towards the entry steps.

  Suddenly, Jake heard a hissing sound, and from the corner of his eye, caught a trail of smoke snaking through the air just down the street from him. At almost the same instant, there was a massive explosion and a huge ball of fire that erupted right behind Steel Will’s Stryker.

  “What the hell was that!?” Jake yelled, swiveling in his seat to follow the trail of smoke in the sky. It led to the rooftop of one of the buildings across the street opposite the hotel. Near the rooftop’s edge, Jake could see a man standing, a rocket launcher perched atop his shoulder. A man directly behind him was helping to reload the weapon.

  Jake maneuvered his Stryker’s machinegun to take aim, but by the time he’d got the gun positioned, it was too late. Jake watched from what moments earlier he had considered the impenetrable confines of his own Stryker as there issued another hissing sound and a wispy trail of smoke shooting through the air from the rooftop. Suddenly the trail stopped and transformed into a huge ball of orange in a direct hit that decimated the other Stryker. Jake watched in stunned disbelief as burning men came pouring out of his destroyed steel baby.

  He gritted his teeth in anger and sprayed fire at the men with the rocket launcher, sending them diving behind the rooftop’s ledge. He could now see more men lining other building rooftops in the area, firing down upon him and his troops, and in the process, pinning his assault team down and keeping them from making their way inside the hotel. Worse yet, his reserves were going to be coming into what was fast becoming a debacle, and he had no way to contact them as he had made the poor decision to issue the pre-set five-minute rendezvous time rather than make direct radio contact with them. And for as pissed as he was about the loss of the Stryker, the realization hit home hard that had he brought Ava along for this assault, she would have been inside the now burning armored vehicle, and most likely dead.

  The realization that it could have been his Stryker that was blown to smithereens, rattled Jake even more though.

  Jake realized, as he looked at the number of weapons trained upon them from the rooftops around him that he’d led his men directly into a deadly valley of fire, and now they were being burned for this lapse in judgment.

  * * *

  Kill King – Jake’s sniper and self-proclaimed “best shooter” – enjoyed his work, and he liked having his skills put to the test. What he didn’t like however, was unforeseen issues. Getting to the stairwell’s rooftop exit only to realize that it was chained shut and that he and his men didn’t have a set of bolt cutters with them was one of those issues that really pissed him off. Not only this, but when Jake had radioed him back at their vehicle to see if he and his men were in position, he’d answered his boss in the affirmative, assuming they’d cover the few floors to the rooftop in under a minute. He didn’t want to be the one to delay Jake’s big attack. Worse yet, he’d left the radio down in their car, so there was no way to inform Jake. It didn’t matter now anyway, as the attack had already begun.

  Without the bolt cutters, Kill King now had to wait while two of his men ran back down the building’s multiple flights of stairs to the ground level, out across the street to where they’d parked, and dig a set of cutters from the trunk. And such a delay had certainly not been integrated into Jake’s hurried pre-attack timeline.

  The King and his best shooter waited impatiently while the two other men he’d selected for his tiny, yet deadly team made the trip back downstairs. The seconds seemed to pass like minutes, and as the shooting erupted outside, the Kill King felt his heart start to pound harder and his hands start to sweat. Not only would his boss not be happy, but he was missing out on all the action.

  So when he heard the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs below him, he was relieved.

  “Finally,” he breathed aloud, listening, counting the steps as they neared. But as he listened, he sensed trouble, and when he heard words in Spanish being uttered by the approaching footsteps, he knew instantly something wasn’t right.

  With lightening quick reflexes, and just as four Hispanic men turned the corner on the stairwell landing below him, the King nudged his best shooter. He nodded wordlessly at the approaching men and drew a pistol with attached silencer from behind him. His shooter followed suit and they both starting plugging silenced rounds into the four men just as they started up the stairs towards them.

  The front two men dropped almost instantly, absorbing most of the bullets the Kill King and his man fired. The two behind them looked up in stunne
d surprise, lifting their automatic rifles to fire. The King nailed the first one with two shots to the chest, but his counterpart’s gun jammed just as he took aim and squeezed the trigger to fire at the second. As the King angled his pistol towards the other attacker below him, the man squeezed the trigger on his automatic rifle. The spray of hot lead ripped into the King’s best shooter, dropping him to the floor. The King clicked off three lighting-quick rounds, hitting his target in the chest. But as the man fell, his still-firing weapon angled towards the King, sending a round into the King’s right thigh. The King faltered and then fell. Seconds later, his other men were back with the bolt cutter.

  “Goddamn it!” the King yelled as he writhed in pain. “What the fuck took you so goddamn long?” he said, grabbing at his thigh.

  “Sorry boss,” they grumbled, one getting to work on the door while the other tended to the King’s wound.

  “Just get it fucking bound up and get me outside!” he barked at the man assisting him with his leg.

  “You’re losing a lot of blood,” the man tending him said.

  “Tie it up as best you can and help me up,” the King ignored the warning.

  A minute later the King was bandaged up as best as the situation allowed for and at the rooftop’s ledge. He and his men hurriedly pulled scoped rifles from cases and rushed to set up shop upon the tallest rooftop in the neighborhood. In the quick scan he made of the scene around him, the Kill King could see three buildings down the street from them, all with lower rooftops than the one they’d chosen for their position, all facing the hotel across the street, and all with men firing from atop them. He figured the men they’d meet in the stairwell had been coming up to do the same.

  “You two take the buildings closest to us,” he said, putting his eye to his rifle’s scope. “I’ll take the furthest.”

  There was a huge explosion in the street below them.

  The King’s leg throbbed, and he could feel warm wetness from the blood he was losing trickling down his leg and into his boot, but his adrenaline was pumping and he didn’t feel the pain. Just as he got his rifle’s crosshairs focused on two men on the distant rooftop, another huge explosion rumbled up from the street below. Suddenly the two men, one of whom was holding a rocket launcher, ducked for cover as a spray of bullets ripped into the rooftop ledge where they stood. As they cowered, the King exhaled slowly, squeezed the trigger, and fired. The man with the rocket launcher keeled over in a heap. The other man looked around, confused and then scrambled to pick up the launcher. Just as he got it into his hands, another perfectly aimed shot from the King dropped him beside his partner.