by DL Barbur
She stepped back, pulled the door wide open.
“Good evening, Dent, please do come in,” she said. She always talked like that. It was affected like she was trying to mimic Jackie Kennedy from watching 1950’s newsreels, but this time her voice broke and went up a notch. Her hands were shaking and her eyes kept looking over to her right.
The smart thing to do would have been to turn around and run away. Maybe I could grab Gina and pull her with me.
Part of me was scared. Part of me felt an immense feeling of relief. The moment I’d been waiting for was finally here.
When I’d been a young, and drunk, Ranger, I’d gotten a tattoo on the center of my chest. It said “Front Towards Enemy,” taken from the instructions molded on a Claymore anti-personnel mine, it summed up my attitude towards life. I tended to meet things head on, and charge, determined to obliterate my enemies or die trying.
So that’s what I did.
I took two long steps through the doorway, shouldering Gina out of the way, and pivoted to my left, the way Gina’s eyes had been darting.
All I had was a fraction of a second to take in the surroundings. I stepped into large, empty foyer with a door and a set of stairs dead ahead, and an open archway to either side. I got just enough of an impression to realize the house was dark and empty of furniture, when a bald guy appeared out of the archway in front of me, holding a pistol at eye level.
I sidestepped and brought my hand up, still in the pocket of the jacket, and still holding the revolver, up to the level of my pectoral muscle and triggered two fast shots. The range was close, and they both hit him. Gina screamed. He dropped to the floor and the weapon discharged with a clacking, buzzing sound. I realized it wasn’t a gun, but rather a Taser.
There was no time to ponder that. I pivoted a 180 to cover the other entrance way just in time to get out of the way of a bullet. I heard a boom and felt the wind of a bullet passing right by my ear as I turned to see another scrawny guy with a big shiny revolver in his hand. He’d cranked his shot off one-handed and the muzzle had risen nearly to the ceiling.
He fought to bring the gun to bear on me, and I had just enough time to register that he had really bad teeth before I fired another round from the revolver in my coat pocket. I rushed the shot and I didn’t think I hit him, but he ducked behind the wall. My stress level was rising and my vision narrowed like I was looking through a soda straw. I was vaguely aware of Gina screaming something, but she sounded like she was far away. Time had slowed down, and my movements felt slow and sluggish like I was underwater.
I pulled my right hand out of the jacket pocket, and transferred the little revolver over to my left hand, grateful I’d practiced this exact move at the shooting range. As I started to draw the big 10mm off my right hip, the guy behind the wall stuck the gun out and pegged a shot at me. It was a dumb move. He didn’t even look, just stuck the gun out and pulled the trigger. People do funny things in gunfights. Plaster dust rained down, so he must have hit the ceiling.
It was a bad way to hit anything, but it helped me figure out where he was standing on the other side of the wall. The 10mm came up to eye level and I fired several shots. The big 200 grain slugs didn’t even slow down as they passed through the plaster and lathe walls. The guy came into view as he hit the deck, twitching.
I stared at him for a second. He looked young and was covered in bad tattoos. I made out a swastika and the dual lighting bolts of the Nazi SS symbol. Part of my mind wondered what was going on. I’d been expecting hardened, trained contract killers, but not this.
One of the things you learn in police firearms training is to make yourself look around after you’ve dealt with a threat. People get tunnel vision and focus on one threat, to the exclusion of everything else. They also got something called “auditory exclusion,” where your brain just edits out sounds, doesn’t process them, because all its computing power is used up by whatever threat you’re looking at.
Belatedly, I realized I’d been standing there, mouth agape, with a gun in each hand. I took a step forward at about the same time I realized Gina was screaming something about “the stairs.” Then she shoved me out of the way. She was half my size, but she did a credible job, burying her shoulder into my ribs just as the guy standing at the top of the stairs opened up on us with a rifle. My little step had brought me into his field of view.
Apparently, my auditory exclusion was over. The rifle shots were excruciatingly loud. Big splinters flew out of hardwood floor where we’d been standing, and the muzzle flashes lit up the stairwell. Gina freaked out totally, and ran for the front door, taking her right through the line of fire. I couldn’t see the shooter from the angle I had, but I pegged a couple of shots in the direction of the stairwell.
Somehow Gina made it through the front door. I could hear her screaming, but I didn’t think she’d been hit. I didn’t dare follow her though. We had a stalemate. If the guy at the top of the stairs tried to come down, I could shoot him before he saw me, but if I made a break for the front door, he could cut me in half.
It was time to leave. I’d managed to John Wayne my way through this so far, with a combination of luck and balls, but I’d already pushed things too far. I turned and ran through the archway to the left of the front door. The guy I’d shot first was gasping and tugging at something in his waistband, so I shot him with the revolver in my left hand as I walked by. The gun went off once, then clicked on the second pull. Empty. It did the job though, because the guy stopped squirming.
I ran through what would have been a big dining room if the house had any furniture. I realized why all the lights had been off. There were no curtains, and I’d have easily seen a bunch of armed assholes inside waiting for me. I made a right turn, towards the back of the house, and through another archway into the kitchen.
There was a guy there, on the other side of a kitchen counter, his face lit up by the glow of a cell phone he was frantically typing on. Good grief. Texting and driving was bad enough, but texting in the middle of a gun fight?
I covered him, with the glowing night sights of the 10mm on his chest.
“Don’t…” was all I had to say before he dropped the phone and went for the pistol on the counter. I shot him twice, center of mass, then paused to line up the sights on his face, but by then he’d already dropped and hit the floor.
I ran around behind the counter. His pistol had gone flying and I couldn’t see it. The guy was lying there curled up in a ball, making the wheezing and gurgling noises from when somebody has holes in their chest that aren’t supposed to be there. I thought about shooting him again, but he wasn’t bothering anybody at the moment, so I decided to let him take his chances.
I took a deep breath, held it for a couple of seconds, then blew it out slowly, keeping an eye on the entrance way. Out front, I could hear Gina screaming, and male voices yelling. I needed a plan.
First I tended to my weapons. I was running around with a pistol in each hand, like a character from a John Woo movie. It had worked so far, but now one was empty, and the other nearly so. It was time for some juggling. I shoved the empty revolver in my waistband to free up my left hand, then swapped the mostly depleted magazine in the 10mm for a fresh one out of the pouch on my belt. I holstered the 10mm long enough to shove the .38 back into my right front pocket. I’d reload it later. I drew the 10mm again, and with my left hand, pulled a flashlight out of a pocket.
Gun juggling over, I took stock. There was more screaming and yelling from out front. I heard the creek of a footfall in the dining room and dropped to the floor, just as the guy with the rifle opened up. He’d followed me, slow and careful, and now was shooting blind through the doorway. Pieces of wood from the kitchen cabinets fell all around me. The sound of the rifle going off in such close quarters was deafening. I felt like my eardrums were being pushed inward and were sure to pop at any second. Shards of glass from the sliding glass door behind me peppered my hair and the back of my neck. A few inches from my
right cheek, a bullet ripped through the front of the dishwasher, leaving a jagged curl of metal sticking out.
Then he was out of ammo, and there was silence. Despite the ringing in my years, I heard a curse and the hollow, metallic thunk of an empty rifle magazine hitting the floor.
I stood, turned on the flashlight with my left thumb, and there he was, yet another bald guy with tattoos, trying to stuff a new magazine into his AK-47. He squinted when the light came on and I shot him in the face. He dropped like a puppet with the strings cut.
It was time to leave. I had a notion to fetch the guy’s rifle, but I didn’t want to take the time. I did grab the cell phone from the counter and shoved it in a pocket. Maybe it would provide some useful information.
I struggled to get the sliding door open for a few seconds until I saw the piece of broomstick in the track. I slid it open and the rest of the glass fell out. Luckily none of it cut me.
I ran into the backyard, and turned left. I hoped to double back and get back out to the street. I wanted to reach my SUV. I had a rifle, body armor, trauma kit, all sorts of goodies in there. Plus, I could just get in and drive away.
A black Suburban was parked in the middle of the street, all four doors open. Two more rough-looking guys were standing there, one with a pistol, the other with a rifle. Both were bald, with tattoos. What was it with these guys? The young guy with the pistol had a hold of Gina’s arm, and as I watched he smacked her in the jaw with it and started dragging her towards the Suburban.
The guy with the rifle was older. Right about the time I realized I was silhouetted by the lights of the house behind me, he saw me. He jerked the rifle up just as I pulled my head back around the corner. A pair of rifle rounds hissed through the place where I’d been a second before.
I’d already shot four men. It was time to stop pressing my luck. It felt wrong to abandon Gina, but I wasn’t going to commit suicide trying to save her. I turned and ran, expecting a bullet between the shoulder blades as I went. There was a low fence separating the backyards and I was over it in a flash, grateful for all the work I’d been doing in the gym.
I ran pell-mell through the backyard, dodging kid’s toys and vaulting over a rake somebody had left in the middle of the grass. As I hurried through the narrow space between houses, I saw a woman’s face at a window. Her mouth was an “o” of surprise. I found myself hoping none of the bullets that had been flying around the neighborhood had hit anybody sitting down to dinner.
Off in the distance, I could hear dozens of sirens. I ran to a street corner and oriented myself by the signs. I was on Multnomah Street. Grateful for the few minutes I’d spent looking at a map myself earlier, I turned to the east and jogged until the street dead-ended into East Holladay Park.
When I hit the park, I slowed to a walk. The green space was deserted. I heard the squeal of tires and the roar of a big V-8 engine over by the house where I’d had the gunfight. The sirens were getting closer. I breathed deep, trying to slow my heart rate.
I checked myself for injuries. I brushed some fragments of glass out of my hair, but somehow I’d come through the whole thing unscathed. I realized the front of the windbreaker was scorched and insulation was leaking out from the fist-sized hole blown out by the revolver’s muzzle blast.
I took my phone, and the one I’d taken off the dead man out of the jacket. I made sure they were both turned off. They both barely fit in the signal blocking pouch, which I stuffed into my back pocket. Then I wadded up the jacket and stuffed it under a bench. I made sure my un-tucked shirt covered my holstered pistol and walked north, skirting an electrical substation, and wound up on Halsey street. I went farther east to cross at a crosswalk. Instead of jaywalking, I forced myself to maintain an unhurried pace as two more police cars screamed down the street, lights and sirens going.
Then I went north and started winding my way through the neighborhood. I’d just shot four men. I couldn’t get back to my car without being arrested. Todd’s people would kill me the second they saw me. I was on foot, alone, and low on ammo.
There was only one thing to do, go get coffee and pie.
CHAPTER FOUR
I worked my way north through a neighborhood, then back west towards 122nd Avenue. I forced myself to maintain an unhurried pace, to look like a guy out for a stroll. After being shut up the whole cold, rainy winter, Portlanders seemed to be reveling in having their windows open. I heard snatches of conversations, laughter, and the occasional argument coming from inside the houses. I felt like some sort of spirit from another plane of existence, full of loneliness, violence, and death, intruding here in the land of the ordinary. Not for the first time, I wondered what it was like to have a normal life that didn’t involve carrying a gun. I wondered if I’d be happy living like that, or if the boring normalcy of a minivan and soccer practice would begin to chafe, and I’d find myself wishing for a life of gunfights and dead bodies.
Portland was home to a chain of 24-hour diners named Shari’s. They had uninspiring food, decent coffee, and good pie. I’d eaten there more times than I’d care to admit when I was a cop, not because I particularly liked it, but because they were open 24 hours and guaranteed a certain level of mediocrity. I was fortunate enough to have been ambushed about half a mile from one.
There were only a few cars in the lot at the 122nd Avenue Shari’s. I knew from experience there would be a lull around this time. Most normal folks had already eaten dinner. People like cops, tow truck drivers and the like weren’t ready for a break yet, and the bars were still open, so the crowds of hungry drunks hadn’t made their way here.
I double checked my reflection in the cars as I walked past. No blood, no scrapes, no cuts, and most importantly no bullet holes. I was still having trouble believing it. I found myself grinning with a certain sick exhilaration. I’d just been ambushed by four guys with guns and come out on top, without even a mark on me.
I didn’t feel particularly bad about the men I’d shot. For one thing, I’d killed people before. Most importantly, they’d been lying in wait for me, clearly intending to do me harm. Big boy games, big boy rules.
At one point in my life, I’d wondered if there was something wrong with me. I could hurt somebody, even kill them in a fight, and not feel the slightest bit of remorse. After a few years of being a detective, I realized there was nothing wrong with me. The sick people were the ones who hurt people for fun, went out of their way to cause pain and suffering. It was the job of people like me to put a roadblock up for their plans. I’d be perfectly happy if I could go through life without ever hurting a fly, but given my choices, that wasn’t likely to happen.
The sign just inside the front door of Shari’s said “Seat Yourself,” so I did, picking a booth in back near the restroom, where I could see the front door. The place was pretty empty. There was a couple in their 50’s eating silently, each engrossed in something on their respective phones, and a lone guy in his 30’s shoveling food down like it was going out of style and looking at his watch. I guessed he was gobbling down a quick meal before working that late shift somewhere.
The waitress sized me up as she walked over, probably trying to decide if I was drunk, an asshole, likely to run off without paying, or some combination of all three. I gave her a smile, trying to look harmless. I kept my hands under the table. They’d developed a tremor in the last few minutes. It was like that for me sometimes. I’d be fine during the fight, then half an hour later, the shakes would start.
“Coffee?” she asked.
I nodded. “And I’ll just have a piece of that strawberry rhubarb pie tonight. I need to get back out on the road before my boss gets mad.”
She gave a little nod. She probably wasn’t even conscious of it. I’d just been categorized as another working stiff just like her, unlikely to be a problem. She filled my mug and went back behind the counter for the pie.
I went to the men’s room. My real interest in Shari’s wasn’t the pie or the coffee. It was the fact th
ey were open 24-hours, and had a dropped ceiling in the men’s room.
The men’s room was made for a single occupant, which was a bonus. I locked the door and lifted up one of the ceiling panels. Inside the dead space between the dropped ceiling and the roof was a nylon satchel. I pulled it out and replaced the ceiling tile. I sat on the toilet and unzipped the bag.
My weapons were the first priority. Inside were a couple spare magazines for the 10mm, and some plastic strips of ammo for the .38. I got both guns topped off and put away. Then I zipped up the bag. I remembered to flush and wash my hands before going back to my booth.
The pie was waiting for me. I took a bite and my stomach rebelled at the cloying sweetness. I was jittery, still coming down off the adrenaline high. I gave my stomach a few minutes to settle before I tried to eat or drink any more.
The satchel held all sorts of useful stuff: ammo, knives, flashlights, medical supplies, but what I wanted now was one of the pre-paid cell phones inside. I turned it on, pleased to see that the battery was still good. I dialed a number from memory.
A man’s voice answered on the third ring.
“Send it.”
“Prairie fire,” I said.
“Copy,” he answered.
“One,” I said.
“Copy,” he said again, and hung up.
I looked at the call log. Sixteen seconds. Perfect. Then I started doing math in my head. On a ranch just east of Redmond, Oregon, a man would be getting ready to head out the door of his house. Say ten minutes, fifteen tops to wake up, get dressed and grab his car keys. It would then take a good three hours to drive here.
