by TW Gallier
I could still see the other two trucks. They were not going to get away.
"Shit!" I cried when the back window shattered.
Three bullets poked holes through the passenger side of the windshield. Mike and Charlie dropped into crouches and returned fire. I spotted four pickups in my rearview, all overflowing with gang members. We were still gaining on the other two trucks, but I couldn't outrun bullets.
The first truck in line behind us swerved and drove straight into a building. That truck burst into flames. I doubted any of them survived that crash. That left three pickups behind us, which my friends were pumping lead into at a furious rate. Not so many bullets were whizzing by us.
When I caught up with the other two moving trucks, I tried to pass on the left, but the truck swung over into the oncoming lane. I hit the brakes to avoid being driven into a crash, turning to the right of him as I floored it. Drawing my pistol, I took it in my left hand and shot five times through the passenger door.
That truck swerved and crashed.
The last truck tried to turn down a side road too fast, and fell on its side in the middle of the intersection. I hit the brakes just in time, skidding to a stop right next to it. Mike jumped out onto the side of the truck, ran up to the cab, and emptied a magazine into it. Charlie and I hit the ground running to the other truck. The driver was dead.
We opened the back door to find dozens of young women. They were battered and bruised, but grateful when we helped them out. We didn't have time to cut them loose. The other three pickups arrived, spilling out a lot of angry young gang members.
All hell broke loose.
We returned fire even as we ushered the freed women into a store. After getting them all on the floor, we took up defensive positions. The walls must've been concrete or cinder blocks with brick veneer. The brick shattered and didn't really stop bullets. But nothing penetrated those walls.
Mike and Charlie took up positions up front, while I secured a side door. The gang members were brave, I'll give them that. They attacked over and over, even though we mowed them down with our automatic weapons. But all good things come to an end. Notably, our ammo.
"I'm on my last magazine," I whispered loudly.
Mike tossed me another. Still, I started choosing my shots better.
Moments later, gunfire that wasn't hitting our building erupted around the corner. The gang bangers turned and fought with another force. We continued to fight, but those young men quickly decided to get the hell out of there.
"Hey. In the store!" a man shouted. "Just let us have our women, and you can go free."
"That's my daddy," one of the women cried.
She looked to be about fifteen or sixteen. Dark hair and eyes, and wearing jeans and a tank top. Just an average teenage girl.
"Can you talk to them and tell them we are helping you, not kidnapping you?" I asked.
"Yes." I cut her wrists free and she hurried to the front. "Daddy! Daddy! It's Emily!"
"Emily, are you okay?"
"I'm fine, Daddy," she said. "Don't shoot. The men in here saved us. They aren't the men who took us."
There was a little back and forth that followed. They wanted us to throw down our weapons. We didn't trust them. After some negotiations, they agreed to let us leave.
"Good luck, ladies," I said. Turning to Mike and Charlie, I'm going to pull around back. Don't come out until I stop and hit the horn."
Just because they said we could leave unmolested didn't mean they meant it.
I walked out as casually as I could. That was the scariest walk of my life. I expected someone to shoot me down at any second. I felt like a human target. A middle-aged man stepped out from behind a building when I was about halfway to the pickup.
"Are they all inside?"
I stopped and faced him. "What do you mean by all? Everyone in the back of those two trucks is inside."
"What about the other truck?" he asked.
I pointed down the road. "We stopped it back a few blocks. It crashed into a store."
"You just left the women there?" he said rather hotly.
"We cut a few loose, and gave them the knife." I paused to look down the street. "Did you come up that way? Didn't you find them?"
"The truck was empty."
I felt sick all over again. Did the women escape? Or did the gang bangers snatch them up again? I didn't know if any of our pursuit peeled off to round up them. The thought hadn't occurred to me until then.
"Oh god," I said. "You don't think…?"
He looked grim, and nodded.
Chapter 22
"I'm sorry," I said. "But I don't know what to tell you. If we stayed, then the other two trucks would've gotten away."
"We know where they are," the older man said. "We don't have the firepower to get them back, but you do."
I laughed, rather nervously. "I'd like to help, but my own family is in dire straits and I can't waste time going on side missions."
"They're children. Some are just ten and twelve," he said. "Those bastards are going to sell them. I don't have to tell you what will become of them, do I?"
My throat knotted up. I couldn't breathe. That guy was good. The more he spoke the more I wanted to help.
Thoughts of my own kids filled my head. What would I do if someone took them like that? I'd definitely expected anyone and everyone to help save them. But I had to get home as fast as possible. What would happen to my family if I was killed trying to save someone else?
"Jesus," I whispered. I glanced toward the store. Charlie and Mike were watching, their weapons on that other man. "I'm Roger Gilley. What's your name, mister?"
"Kevin Matthews," he said. "I was in the Marines. We didn't leave anyone behind."
"Funny. Not exactly the same thing," I said. I was shaking like a leaf. "I can't think straight, Kevin. I'm torn between saving those girls, and racing to my family. I'll let my friends decide."
I was scared to death they'd want to stay and help those poor women. Yet, I was terrified they'd choose to abandon them to help me. Talk about a damned if you do, damned if you don't moment.
I waved for Mike and Charlie to join us. More of Kevin's comrades joined us as well. My friends came over more warily, weapons still at the ready.
"What's up, man?" Mike asked.
We all paused to watch as dozens of men and women rushed over to the store. The kidnapped women were coming out in a rush. There were lots of tearful reunions. Worse, some parents, husbands, and brothers weren't finding who they were looking for.
"This is Kevin," I said. "My friends are Mike and Charlie." I paused. "The women in the first truck we stopped were retaken. Kevin knows where they're being held."
"He wants us to help rescue them," Charlie finished.
"Pretty much."
Mike and Charlie looked at each, then at me. I saw the uncertainty in them. Kevin must've seen it too. He stepped forward and spoke.
"They are going to sell our wives and daughters into white slavery for guns," he said. "Some of them are only children."
My friends looked as horrified as I felt. We turned toward the joyful reunions, and the terrible failures to reunite. The decision was already made. We couldn't walk away.
"God help us," I muttered. "We're helping them?"
They nodded.
"Definitely," Mike replied.
"Hell yes!" Charlie said.
I paused to let that sink in. I looked at the setting sun, wondering how the time passed so fast. I wasn't having fun.
"What do you have?" I asked Kevin. "We have to move quickly."
We soon had a city map spread out atop the pickup's hood. The locals indicated the building where the kidnapped women and girls were taken. It was deep within their gang's territory. The gang claimed a few blocks around it in all directions.
We quickly came up with a plan, with the help of some former military within the locals. All of the armed men were divided up into three groups. Mike, Charlie, and I each
led a group, since they thought we were "active duty" soldiers. We didn't correct them.
We followed Kevin's SUV a few miles. Everyone pulled over and stopped in a store parking lot. There wasn't another soul to be seen. Very eerie. That was where we split up into three teams of twenty each. Kevin came with me.
I carried my M-4. Mike had his weapon, and Charlie had the M-249 SAW. Team Charlie was the fire support team. He even loaned his M-4 to another guy on the team, plus three others had Uzis, one guy had a Mac-10, and another had an AR15. The rest carried hunting rifles.
My team was going into the building to get the women. I was the only one with an automatic weapon. Everyone else carried shotguns for in close fighting. Mike's team was a mixture of rifles, pistols, and shotguns. Mike was tasked with engaging the gang in the street as a distraction.
Team Charlie moved out first. They had to find a way into an adjacent structure and take up positions. They would be the team to initiate the attack, so Team Mike and my team had to be ready.
Next Team Mike left. They went to the south of the target building. I led my team to the north side of the building. We moved cautiously through the quickly darkening streets. I heard the gang before I spotted them.
The target was a five-story red brick structure. At first I thought it was either a hotel or office building. Then I spotted large roll-up bay doors on one side. So it was either a warehouse or manufacturing. There were no names or logos on it.
The gang members were gathered around those open bay doors, with an open fire in front of them. Unlike in the previous fight, there were both men and women. They didn't look or act happy. Some of them were in animated discussions. I noticed everyone was armed, including most of the women.
"They outnumber us two to one," I whispered to Kevin.
"I didn't know there were so many," he said, looking a little nervous. "We have to hit them hard right off, or we'll fail."
Even though those gang members had turned into what I thought of as "savages," they were still American citizens. As a soldier it was my duty to protect, not attack my fellow Americans. Yet, they were kidnapping innocent girls to sell for more weapons. They had to be stopped, and I thought just rescuing the women wouldn't be enough.
Their gang had to be broken, if not wiped out.
I can't even believe I'm thinking like this.
My heart pounded. I felt hot and sweaty, and quite tense. It was like going on a combat mission in Afghanistan, especially going into a hostile village to root out Taliban.
I studied the building in the quickly fading light. The front entrance was double doors. They looked like solid wood doors, but with glass panels to either side. Kevin had a police battering ram, but there were people coming and going through those doors. Two women were smoking cigarettes outside of them at that moment.
The first, second, fourth, and fifth floors had flickering fire light coming through the dirty windows. There were shadows moving across the windows on all of those floors. I wondered how many were in that gang.
Ratta-tat-tat-tat-tat! Ratta-tat-tat-tat!
I could see the tracers coming from Charlie's SAW. The rest of his team opened up a second later. Gang members dropped like flies. A second later more fire came in from the south. Mike was attacking. The gang members started returning fire.
"Let's go!" I cried.
I took off running toward the front entrance. The two women squawked and ran away. It sounded like I was charging into a major battle. I hadn't heard a firefight that intense since leaving the Army. Indeed, that might've been more intense than anything I was ever involved in during combat.
Gang members started shooting at us before we were halfway to the building. Two of my men fell. I didn't stop, but noticed another man stop to check on them. I reached the door first, but it wouldn't open.
"Locked!" I cried, and moved aside.
Four men with the black steel battering ram rushed up. They hit it once, twice, three times before it broke open. Every strike boomed ominously. Bullets ripped through the doors as they began to move back. All four men dropped dead at my feet.
I turned my weapon on the door and opened up. Everyone else did as well. After I expended an entire 30-round magazine, I replaced it with a full one and signaled a ceasefire. I kicked the door open all of the way, and no one fired from inside. So I rushed through, weapon held at the ready. There was a tall, skinny black guy sprawled atop of a growing pool of blood. One of my team took his Uzi.
It was an old lobby, complete with a built-in receptionist desk to one side of the stairs. There was a long, dark hallway on the other side of the stairs, and open doors to the adjacent rooms.
More gang bangers rushed in from the hallway with guns blazing. We all dropped to a knee and opened up on them. There was an intense firefight. I wasn't sure if we killed any of them, but they killed one of us, and wounded two more. I was down to ten guys now, just half the men I started with.
Mike's team must've hit them again, because the gunfire outside intensified. The gang bangers threatening us vanished. I didn't wait for them to come back, and rushed toward the stairs. Kevin was staying beside me, despite his age. We advanced up those stairs in a mad rush.
Gang bangers and their women fought us all the way. We had to stop to clear the second floor. It was all open, with cots and old chests scattered around. The only real cover were the thick concrete pillars. There were only five people on that floor, but they were all armed and ready to fight. Two of them were women, who fought just as hard as the men.
Some of my men had continued up the stairs. I heard their fight above. Kevin and I charged up the stairs, finding one of our men dead on the stairs, and another mortally wounded at the top. The third floor only had one guy, but he was behind a thick pillar with an AK-47.
Boom! echoed through the building.
Mike was finally firing 40mm grenades.
Boom!
"Hit him with a grenade!" I shouted.
My ploy worked. The gang banger panicked and stepped into the open with a cry of rage as he emptied his weapon at us. We returned fire, maybe hitting him a hundred times.
"You have grenades?" Kevin asked.
"No."
Boom!
"Could've fooled me," he muttered.
I charged up the stairs. Two women and a man stood at the top of the stairs firing down at us. I emptied a magazine into them, and then stopped to reload while Kevin and the others rushed past me on either side. Gunfire erupted above me, and then Kevin came tumbling back down.
"Kevin! Are you alright?"
"No," he gasped.
It was a shoulder wound. From its position, I figured he had some shattered bones, but nothing vital was hit. I told him to keep pressure on it.
"Don't go anywhere," I said.
He barked a laugh.
My team was taking some intense fire up on the fourth floor. I quickly joined them, scanning the situation. It was open like the other floors, but no cots or chests. No signs of habitation at all.
Boom! echoed through the building again.
Spotting a dropped pistol on the floor, I snatched it up and threw it. That heavy steel pistol clattered loudly across the hardwood floors.
"Grenade! Get down!" I shouted.
Even my team fell to the floor. I dropped to one knee, elbow on a knee to help steady my aim. The gang bangers dropped to the floor, which exposed them. I started shooting. Three of five were dead or wounded before anyone figured out I lied.
I rushed the last two, with my team following. They stepped out of cover to engage us. It was pretty intense, but within seconds one of my men was dead, and both of them. The wounded guy was shot in the head by one of my team.
"What the fuck, man?" I cried. "We're the good guys. We don't murder prisoners."
"They don't take old women or men prisoner, and they don't leave anyone behind," he said. "I gave him back what he gave us."
That took me aback. No one had mentioned anything like t
hat before. The gang bangers were killing anyone they couldn't sell?
"It doesn't matter if they are cold-blooded savages," I said through clenched teeth. "We cannot allow ourselves to drop to that level."
Someone started shooting at us. We dropped to the floor. Everyone in my team was immediately returning fire. I couldn't have been more proud of them. The gang bangers trying to escape the top floor were mowed down. One managed to get past us. I heard a single shot below and thought of Kevin.
"Shit!" I cried, racing over to the stairs. The gang banger was sprawled at the bottom of the stairs. Kevin slanted a look up to me, lifting a pistol. "Dayum."
My team was already heading up the last flight of stairs. We found the lost women huddled in the corner. No guards.
"Hurry up," I said.
We cut their wrists free and led them down the stairs. What few men I had left flanked them. I stopped next to Kevin on the way down.
"Just like the Army, always saving you jarheads' butts," I said. "Do I have to carry you?"
"Crap. When this is over, I want you to come over to my house," Kevin said as I helped him stand. With one arm around him, we followed the rescued women down. "I'll give you a big steak dinner for helping us, and then I'm going to kick your ass for that lie about saving Marines."
"First we have to get out of here alive."
Chapter 23
"Quick! More of them are coming!" a young man called when we excited the front entrance.
I heard gunfire on the other side of Team Mike. Looking up, I saw Charlie's team was shooting in that direction. The newcomers must be a greater threat than the home team.
Kevin shook me off. "I'm fine."
"You don't look fine."
"That's because you're not a Marine," he said. "I fought in the gulf war. Two Purple Hearts. In the Marines this is considered a scratch."
"Okay, you win," I said, shaking my head. "Take a couple aspirins and start a recruiting station in the morning."
"Shame you're a stinking soldier," he said. "You might've made a halfway decent Marine."
"My father, uncle, and cousins are all jarheads," I said. "I get seasick, so joined the Army. Airborne!"
