The Systemic Series - Box Set

by K. W. Callahan

Jake was inside maybe 15 minutes when we heard the sound of other vehicles approaching.

  I glanced in the rearview mirror to see several SUVs closing rapidly down the street from behind where we sat parked.

  “Oh shit,” I said, sliding down in my seat and pulling Will down with me.

  “What is it?” he asked, not having had a chance to look.

  “SUVs,” I said as they blew past us.

  We counted three go by and then heard the sound of screeching of tires.

  We moved so that we could peer over our dashboard. Ahead of us, we could see the three SUVs stopped askew, blocking the entire street. Just past them, we saw two more such vehicles stopped in the street facing us from the other direction. Men with automatic rifles were emptying from the vehicles and into the street.

  I quickly started the car. As soon as I did so, we heard the first sounds of gunfire. I wanted to leave, but I was curious too, and I wanted to see what happened. I know it was probably one of the dumbest things I could have done, but instead of hightailing it out of there at the first signs of trouble, I stayed, and waited, and watched.

  In front of us, a scene of chaos erupted. The attacking SUVs had blocked the street and pinned in the two vehicles that had delivered Jake to his mistress’s condo. The two SUVs farthest from us spilled at least ten heavily-armed men from inside. They concentrated their fire upon Jake’s SUV. His driver made a vane attempt to defend himself and his vehicle with nothing more than a handgun, and then he dashed across the tiny front law toward the condo where he was promptly gunned down.

  Four men exited the other SUV that had accompanied Jake and had parked behind his personal ride. These men were better equipped for such a conflict, armed with assault rifles. Two directed their fire at the men who had poured from the farthest two SUVs, half of whom were heading toward the condo. The other two fired at the three SUVs that had approached from our rear. A multitude of heavily-armed men from two of these SUVs, returned fire, dropping one of Jake’s guards, and forcing the other three guards back inside the SUV. The third attacking SUV pulled across the condo lawn and drove around behind the structure.

  It looked bad for Jake. I could only imagine what was going on inside. One second he’d been in the throws of passion, the next, all hell was breaking loose, and it was almost certain that he was going to die in a matter of minutes.

  Suddenly someone started firing with a heavy machinegun from the second floor of the condo. Big flashes of fire poured from one of the front windows.

  It appeared that Jake was making his presence known.

  Several of the attackers on the lawn dropped; others retreated back to the relative safety of their SUVs that were now also being riddled with bullets as Jake raked his fire back and forth across the lawn and street haphazardly. I figured he saw himself as a Scarface sort of character, making his last wild stand. I had to give him credit for having the foresight to stash some heavy weaponry inside the home. But I realized he’d only be able to hold out for so long. The attackers had numbers and the element of surprise on their side, and the men circling around to the rear of the home didn’t bode well for Jake’s chances. I guessed that they would be inside and upstairs momentarily, and once that happened, it’d likely be all over for Jake.

  Suddenly the front door to the condo burst open and Jake’s naked mistress ran out across the lawn.

  “What the hell is she doing?” Will cried. “Fucking idiot!”

  He hadn’t even finished the words before her body jolted violently as it was riddled with bullets. We couldn’t tell if the bullets were coming from the attackers’ guns or Jake’s wild spray of fire, but whoever provided them, the effects were instantaneous and deadly.

  She dropped to the ground motionless.

  “What a waste,” Will said, shaking his head sadly.

  We both had our binoculars out now and were peaking our heads over the dashboard just enough to watch the ongoing assault.

  “I give Jake about one…maybe two more minutes,” I said.

  “Meh…he might make it three,” Will said.

  A couple stray bullets suddenly pinged into our car.

  “Shit!” I hissed. “We’d better get out of here. Not worth dying to watch the end.”

  Just as I sat up to put the car into drive and beat it back home, one of the SUVs blocking the far side of the street exploded in a ball of flames, sending several of the men sheltering around it flying and the rest running for better cover. From an adjoining side street rolled the monstrous armored vehicle and SUV we’d seen driving with Jake on the way to the townhouse and that had peeled off before we arrived.

  The armored vehicle came to a stop, angling across the road. The SUV pulled up behind it. Men piled out from inside both vehicles, some of them headed around the back of the condo. Meanwhile, the armored vehicle sent another projectile into one of the SUVs near us, sending it up in a ball of flames as well.

  This event sent the attackers nearest us scurrying back into their remaining vehicles and allowed Jake’s men, who had been taking cover in the SUV parked in front of the condo, to extract themselves from their precarious position. Two of the guards headed for the front door of the condo and one remained to continue firing at the SUV nearest us. The armored vehicle began moving again, ramming its way past the first flaming SUV and smashing into the SUV that still blocked the road. It shoved it aside and sent its men scurrying while guards atop the armored vehicle sprayed them with machinegun fire.

  The attackers nearest us saw the armored vehicle approaching and decided enough was enough.

  Heavy machinegun fire continued from Jake’s position on the second floor, and it looked as though the tide had turned quickly and violently in his favor.

  Will and I decided not to stick around to find out for sure.

  The armored vehicle was heading our way and I figured it was going to pursue the retreating SUV. I wanted to be get out ahead of them to avoid getting caught in the crossfire. I threw our little car into reverse, punched the gas, and headed in reverse down the street to the intersection where I hit the brakes hard, swung the car around – its tires squealing – while I ground the transmission into drive and punched the gas. The acceleration seemed to be at a snail’s pace, and the car was pulling to one side from what I guessed was a flat tire that had probably been punctured by a stray bullet.

  I think I did more watching in the rearview mirrors than ahead of us as the death and destruction faded in to a cloud of distant smoke. We kept up our rearview monitoring all the way home to ensure we weren’t followed, but it appeared that Jake’s men were content to focus on the rats they’d obviously caught in their trap, not us.

  Once we were a safe distance away, I slowed our progress, not wanting to destroy the vehicle completely with our flat tire. Pieces of rubber were flying off and smacking against the car’s bodywork.

  “Apparently Jake’s a bit more savvy than we’d given him credit for,” I said after we’d made it out of downtown and we’d slowed enough to be heard over the din of the flapping tire pieces.

  “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.

  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 toward one another from opposite ends of the street and came to an abrupt halt in front of the boutique-style hotel where 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 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. 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 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 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 draw 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 and 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, this sound had concerned him. But with each ensuing assault, the st
rength 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 fire 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. They were quickly blown open and blasted off their hinges.

  As soon as these doors were open, Jake turned his Stryker’s machinegun toward 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 toward 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 a particularly pesky machine gunner was sheltered. 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.