A Shot In The Night (John Harper Series Book 2)

by Edward Holmes

  Peter instinctively went to grab the steering wheel but his friend slumped to the side turning the vehicle with him and towards a red brick wall on their right hand side. All Peter could do was hope the crash killed him instead of the hot metal of a rifle bullet but either way he prayed it would be quick.

  Chapter Fifty

  Shooting is very similar to martial arts in some aspects. To perfect either craft you have to be dedicated and focussed, both require controlled breathing and hours of practice which eventually leads to honed muscle memory. Long distance shooting is even more of a perfected art. You judge windage, elevation, even the curvature of the Earth and its effects on the projectile you are discharging. That is all as well as distance. Right now the 'Seasonal Shooter' was well within his comfortable range. This was positively close for his high powered rifle as he opened fire. The first shot he had been particularly proud of.

  Perched as he was on the roof of a disused petrol station, the angle was not perfect for the shot. It still allowed for him to look down the road and see the driver clearly as he pulled the trigger. The bullet went squarely through the windscreen and into its intended target. Through the scope he had a moment to see the carnage he had wrought before the dead man's hands turned the wheel, slamming the van into a high wall next to the police station on the left as the shooter saw it.

  The van was then hit from behind by a trailing police car, skidding so it was at an angle and presenting a new target. The shooter opened fire on the new vehicle hitting the engine three times as his rounds tracked up. A fourth shot hitting the passenger in the shoulder as the car smashed into the wall next to the police station. Brick from the wall hindered the passenger from opening the door and before he stood a chance of getting out, the shooter fired two more rounds into his chest as he struggled to release the seatbelt with one arm.

  The police officer who had been driving was dazed, shocked by the violence of the crash and the gunshots, which was then compounded by the airbag exploding in his face. He turned to see his friend and work colleague being riddled with bullets. Blood splattered across his face and eyes. Panic seized him and he grabbed for the door handle, his other hand unclipping the seatbelt. He fell out to the pavement, hearing and feeling the thud of bullets that hit the door. Metal shards sliced into his arm. He vaguely heard the shout from the officer who was still in the van, the call to run behind the vehicles for cover.

  Scrambling, he made the perilously short journey as rifle fired crackled around him before briefly stopping. Slumped against the cold metal he breathed heavily, the warm air from his breath mixing with steam rising from his body. He looked across at the officer who had told him to move as he called in on his radio for back up.

  The shooter reloaded putting a new magazine into his rifle. He could not see the two police officers that had survived and he was angry with himself for not hitting them when he had the chance. Ten shots and only two kills.

  Peter was also thinking about the missed shots. He had come to fear the shooter, worried the man was an expert but he would not be alive if this guy was as well trained as some of the men he had known in the service. All he had to do was remain behind cover and wait for reinforcements to arrive. Across from him he saw the other officer struggling to breathe and he shouted to him to relax and stay behind the bulk of the car.

  Time was now running against the shooter, this was not part of his plan. He had to expedite things. Taking aim at the roof of the police transport, he fired four times. The bullets travelled through the metal and into the close confines. Inside the prisoners began to scream and shout. They began banging and rocking the van as another two rounds hit it, then another two. A loud yelp was heard from interior and more banging, this time more furious.

  Peter opened the back door to see light streaming through the eight holes and one of the four drug dealers clutching the back of his leg. Blood was soaking the light grey jogging bottoms he had on and although his face was ashen, he still yelled for help. Peter was in a dilemma, leave the men in there to an excruciating fate of waiting like the proverbial fish in a barrel or let them out and risk them over powering him.

  He shouted at them for calm and unlocked the inner cage door, believing it was the only thing he could do. However he was right about the latter part of his dilemma and was bowled to the floor as two of the men burst out; one of them tripped in the space from the can to the floor, the other set off running.

  After waiting for a shot, suddenly he was presented with one and the sniper took aim and fired. The round hit the back of the fleeing suspect’s knee, exploding in a shower of blood, bone and cartilage and leaving the man helpless on the floor. The second man who had attempted to escape suddenly halted, unaware that his head was now between the crosshairs of the scope sat atop the shooter's rifle. He spun slowly in place to return back to the safety of the van but was then essentially decapitated as the back of his skull exploded, covering the first runner in his brain matter when a well placed shot rang out.

  Peter huddled down behind the rear passenger wheel trying to keep pressure on the leg of the wounded man, thankful that he could hear the sounds of police sirens in the distance.

  Chapter Fifty One

  The rifleman also heard the sirens and felt no comfort. He also felt no fear only the thought that there would be more targets for him to fire on. What he was more concerned about was the sound of a helicopter approaching. On a personal note he did not feel that those police officers and pilots could possibly collude with drug dealers to the same extent as the ones on the street that he had already dispatched. He would however fire on the vehicle if it came too close or threatened to reveal his location.

  Instead he calmly put his hand into a pocket of his camouflage jacket and removed one of the multiple mobile telephones he had on his person. He was still lying in the prone position, his rifle resting on a padded bag. His eyes remained focused on the van and the car and he made a call on the cell phone.

  The small rucksack that Peter Stevenson had seen earlier suddenly came to life. A short explosion which was more deafening than forceful moved the stricken drug dealer from the ground. Its concussive force shattered the nearby windows of one of the houses which were not as well glazed as others. Following that, shorter less forceful bangs erupted. It sounded like gunfire which was enough to make the driver of the police car stand up.

  Of course he was frightened; he thought he was under fire from a location behind his cover and he ran towards the police station entrance. It was a good eighty yards away and around a corner. He was barely ahead of his own vehicle when he was hit. The first shot hit him in the chest, spinning him, before a second hit him in the gut and the larger man fell to the ground dead.

  A grim smile crossed the shooter’s face and he moved the rifle to the front of the police station. The small squat building was on the corner of a side street, opposite which was a playing field with three football pitches and greenery for walking around. Surrounding the field were trees which made it difficult to get a clear shot on the entrance or the windows and completely obscured the secondary entrance which was in the enclosed police car park where the van was supposed to have delivered the arrested drug dealers. He could see three men outside the building; one of them had made it to the corner and seen the small massacre that the shooter had dished out already. It was a mistake he would not recover from as he became the fourth police officer to be shot. The bullet hit him in the chest and doubled him over the low wall and behind some cover.

  One of the men ducked and ran, keeping a low profile to help his fallen comrade, the final officer was chased back inside as the sniper opened fire on the entrance and visible windows, shattering them in a cascade of glass. There were still three rounds in his rifle magazine and he pumped one into the small brick wall that provided cover for the officer who was struggling valiantly to save his colleague. The power of the bullet was enough to crumble the brickwork and cover the man in dust as he fell back, stunned. A second s
hot destroyed more of the wall, and in a moment of selflessness the man dived over the stricken officer, hoping to protect him if there was another bullet. Instead the gunman turned away from that target as a sign of grudging respect for the officer. He fired the final shot into the rear passenger van tire.

  With the helicopter now hovering overhead and the police cars nearing, the shooter wanted to move position so as to keep them off guard. The helicopter was directly above the crime scene but he knew that they would struggle to see him. Although he was wearing camouflaged clothing more suitable for forest warfare, he had covered himself with two sheets. The closest layer was thermally insulated so that the heat sensors would struggle to see him, the second outer layer was coloured like the dilapidated rough and there was enough accumulated junk up there to make it difficult for anyone to make out his prone figure. Leaving the rifle and shouldering the bag he had been resting on, he quickly got down from the roof of the old petrol station using a ladder he had brought with him. Briefly covered from view by the building he had been using, the shooter took two smoke grenades from his bag. They had been easy to come by compared to the weapons he was using and he tossed them across the street till the entire road was covered in a thick white fog. He folded the sheeting he had been using and placed it in his bag before running to the nearest lamppost.

  Under the cover of darkness the night before, he had made some arrangements in the area. With hardly anyone on the street he had not only placed the backpack, which had detonated earlier, but had also tied thin high tension fishing line to the base of the light, and had attached a plastic bag to it just in case anyone had passed by and looked carefully therefore thinking it was nothing more than just another piece of rubbish on the street. Picking up the spool he ran across the road and tied it to the metal fencing that surrounded the park area. It took some time but he rigged one of the handguns he had in his bag of weapons to the line as a booby trap and pointed it down the street, facing away from the besieged police station.

  The helicopter hovered above and the downforce from the rotors was slowly clearing the smoke. It swirled and was nearly fully dissipated before the gunman threw another surprise across the road, this time something he had been working on for a couple of weeks and he was interested to see if his labour would pay off. Not once whilst he was making the small weapons did he think that he would be using them on the police but after seeing Harper save the drug kingpin, he was more than happy to give them a test run today.

  It had taken him a full day to assess his target areas, which had been the reason for the delay, and he also wanted his parcel deliveries to arrive on the same morning without arousing suspicion. He had been tempted to just walk up to one of the policemen patrolling the street and shoot them up close but this plan was to maximise the amount of damage. It was also so well planned that if everything did go to script even more drug dealers and police would die as a consequence of his actions. The shooter had surprised himself with the leap he had taken to start killing the police. At first it felt wrong to even contemplate putting the crosshairs over a boy in blue, but the more he thought about it and how drugs were so prevalent on the street the easier it was to see that there must be widespread collusion or just sheer incompetence. Even if it was just negligence on their behalf, he hoped that his actions would put more scrutiny on the police and the dealers and that there would be a crackdown. He had seen the way the media had turned on him but he had never started this to be some sort of hero. No, he wanted to clean the streets around him and save people. Some people had to die for that possible future and he was the only one brave enough to do it.

  No one was out on the street or in the park but he still ran under the cover of the trees and jumped over the dilapidated railings till he was directly opposite the police station. He had not been able to get a police radio to listen in on their conversations but was sure that the helicopter had pinpointed him now. The surviving officer who was by the wall was just visible to the shooter. Even from across the road and in the midst of the remnants of smoke he could see the blood covering the man’s hands. A brief moment passed where the gunman thought of his actions before he hurled a grenade over the metal railings and a parked car into the small car park of the police station.

  Ducking behind a tree and also shielded by that same car, the man who had brought destruction to that small suburb covered his ears as the device detonated. Windows shattered; fragments flew and sliced through the bodies of the two officers near the wall, killing them. Inside, people hid under desks and cowered in fear of another attack. They were right to be afraid for their safety as another grenade flew through the air and into one of the damaged windows. The explosion was muffled by the walls but the calls for help and screams of anguish were still audible.

  Time was running out for the shooter though, as he heard the sirens coming even closer. It had only been a couple of minutes since he had left the rooftop but the response time was even better than he had anticipated. He had specifically chosen one of the more remote stations and when he had thrown the grenade at the drug den earlier in the day, he had ensured that the majority of the available police in the area would be attending that scene. Of course, with a city the size of Liverpool there would be more police to help plus the armed response unit that was tasked with bringing him down. However he had reduced the amount of responders by the fake ricin attacks he had had delivered across the Merseyside police force. There were only three stations in this direction he had not sent parcels to, which not only reduced the effectiveness of a response but also ensured that the police would have to bring the drug dealers to this particular station since it was the closest and had a suitable detention area.

  With more haste than previously seen, he hurled a smoke grenade at the station and down the road, away from the destruction he had already created. Once the smoke was sufficiently thick enough, he scattered more of his surprises across the tarmac and ran back behind the cover of the treeline. Firing one of the remaining pistols out of his bag at the van and car, he kept the remaining survivors from seeing which direction he was taking. With the last of his smoke grenades he covered the T junction of the road in thick white mist. Taking a knee briefly, he pulled out the sheeting and put it on as a makeshift poncho. He knew that their helicopter would still be able to see his face and hands on their thermal imaging but if he moved quickly there would be no possible way they could track him in this area especially since he utilised the last of the tricks he had laid out the night before.

  He had managed to walk across the road in the early morning with no one paying attention to him. His face had been covered by a thick black scarf and down his leg he had taped a small hose with which he had discretely coated the junction with petrol. It was only a thin layer and blended well with the sheen from the cold morning dew. Still, once he was close to it the shooter could smell the fumes and he took out a flare from his bag of tricks and ignited it. Tossing it into the road, the petroleum caught fire and covered the road in acrid black smoke, which further reduced visibility.

  Down the road, opposite the van, he saw the flashing lights of a police vehicle approaching and in the first moment of desperation he opened fire with a pistol, spraying deadly lead down the road as more of a distraction than in the hope of hitting someone. He had hoped he could have disappeared before more police arrived on the scene. Still he waited for only a short amount of time till the petrol flames were sufficiently raging before running into the smoke and out of sight.

  Chapter Fifty Two

  I was sitting in my car, which was parked outside the bookmakers near the Fraser gym, when my phone rang. The number was withheld and although that would normally stop me from answering the call, I was on a case so accepted the intrusion into my thoughts.

  “Hello?”

  It was difficult to hear anything on the other end as there appeared to be the repeated sound of gunfire, the thumping of mortars and the occasional detonations of explosives. To me it sounded more li
ke one of Harris' video games than real life, “John, I can't really talk at the moment but I thought I would give you a heads up.”

  “Rich. Where the hell are you?”

  “I can't tell you. Just put it this way, I'm trying to protect some books,” my friend said with a strained tone in his voice as if he was doing something else other than calling me.

  I shrugged at his comments, “Guess that is one of your ‘need to know things’. What is the call for then, matey?”

  “Just here to help you. Your friend on the force will probably be calling you in a second to inform you of the details so I will be brief. I'll give you a number you can call if you need my help as well.”

  “Rich, get to the point, it's unlike your types to beat around the bush.”

  It was as if I could hear his smile down the phone as he moved, creating a ruffling effect, “I had a colleague monitor police frequencies to keep me informed if there was any more attacks after the threat went viral. As of approximately,” he paused for a second, “three minutes ago an attack was reported on the Elsworth estate police station. Sniper fire and explosives have been reported with both civilian and police casualties.”

  “Fuck!” I exclaimed as I hurriedly put a Bluetooth headset on, the small earpiece projecting Rich's voice as I started the ignition and tried to think of the best way to Elsworth police station, I'd done my best to memorise the area since my satellite navigation device had been playing up.

  “Yeah that about sums it up. Anyway I was trying to keep you ahead of the game, I take it you are on the way now?”