Bob Burke was fast, but he had no doubt that the gunman had never seen a maniac with flashing knives running full speed right at him before. No doubt, that was a bit disconcerting, but in close-quarter, lethal combat, you either reacted or you were dead. If the gunman had been Ranger or Delta trained, he would have turned and fired and their short dustup would be terminated. So would Bob. Instead, the gunman froze and the heavy 8-inch knife struck him at the base of his throat, between the ski mask and his chest bone, and went in deep. Game, set, match. His hands went to his throat, grabbing at the knife, and he dropped the M-4. He wobbled back and forth for a moment, gurgling blood, until he collapsed to his knees.
Bob didn’t stop. Neither did the second gunman. Having an extra second or two to react, he began to swing his automatic rifle around. Bob had already switched the meat cleaver into his right hand and threw it as hard as he could. Getting a well-balanced throwing knife to rotate with the exact number of revolutions to strike a target with the tip of its blade required a lot of coordination and practice. Getting an unfamiliar carving knife to do that, as he had with the first throw, was more luck than skill. Getting a heavy, unbalanced meat cleaver to do much of anything was pure luck. In this instance, as soon as he threw the cleaver, he sensed he didn’t have the proper number of rotations to strike the guy with the sharp edge of the blade. Not even close, but the throw was on target and that was all that mattered. The thick top edge or spine of the meat cleaver struck the gunmen in the center of his forehead. It didn’t cut or even penetrate, but the blow laid him out cold, as if he had run into the edge of a heavy oak door. As he fell, his finger squeezed the trigger, and the M-4 fired a short burst of bullets that tore up the shelves and tile floor but didn’t hit anyone.
Without stopping, Bob reached down, picked up the first gunmen’s M-4 carbine, and dropped to one knee at the end of the aisle. He quickly scanned the front of the store through its M-68 Aimpoint optical sight, looking for new targets. What he saw was chaos. There were several dozen civilians lying on the floor, many bloodied and wounded, others not, while still more tried to hide behind the counters and display tables. Worse, there were four more gunmen standing on top of the counters in ski masks, Army ACUs with no insignias, and desert boots, holding M-4s, shooting at anything that moved at the front of the store. Two more gunmen stood on the floor between the counters, and there was one more posted in the front doorway barking out orders.
Ace peeked at him from around the corner of the next aisle, and Bob tossed him the second gunman’s M-4 carbine. “Ski masks. You start from the left; I’ll start from the right,” Bob said as he took aim at the gunman on the far right, who was already turning back in Bob’s direction. When he saw his two pals lying on the floor, it didn’t take him long to conclude something was wrong, and to swing his rifle in Bob’s direction. Whether their ACUs were legit or stolen, from the way the gunman moved and the way he held his weapon, it was obvious he had had military training. Special Ops? Bob doubted it. They didn’t look that good, but they had received solid infantry training somewhere and that was all it took.
Bob put the crosshairs of the M68 optical sight on the center of the man’s head, flipped the selector switch to semi-automatic fire, let half of his breath out, and squeezed the trigger three times. He had done that hundreds of times before and got the same result. In the hands of an expert marksman like him, with a target in the open less than a hundred feet away, it was no contest. The M855A1 copper-jacketed 5.56-millimeter bullets traveled on what was virtually a straight line and struck the gunman in the center of his head, exactly where Bob’s crosshairs lay, snapping him over backwards. Before he hit the floor, Ace had put two bullets into the man at the other end of the line and put him down just as permanently. From that point on, it was a quick “turkey shoot” and it no longer mattered whether the remaining gunmen saw them or not. It took no more than three seconds and fewer than a dozen bullets for Bob and Ace to put down the four men standing on the checkout counters.
That left the two in the aisles, plus the one at the front door. Both he and Ace took shots at them, but the split-second it took for them to rotate those few additional degrees and settle the crosshairs on their third targets was enough for both gunmen to duck below the counters and their bullets to miss high.
No sooner had one of the gunmen dropped below the counter than he popped back up between the counters like a Jack-in-the-Box, just as Bob expected him to do. Two more head shots eliminated that threat, which left one more. Whether the gunman knew it or not, he had a very basic tactical problem with three options. With two armed men gunning for him, he could choose to concentrate his fire on one of them, choose to “hose down” the general area and try to get them both, or he could crawl away as fast as he could and hope for a better tomorrow. In this case, both men gunning for him were expert marksmen and far better trained than he was, so the odds of any of those three options working were never very good to begin with. He opted to raise the rifle over the top of the counter and go for “John Wayne full-automatic.” Unfortunately, his aim was high and all he accomplished was to tear up the shelves of canned goods and bottled sauces above where Bob knelt, splattering him with Mama Mia tomato sauce and canned corn.
That one stayed down behind the counter, so Bob’s eyes shifted to the one in the doorway, who had been giving orders. Ignoring the splattered food, Bob rose and fired a short burst at him. Unfortunately, he wasn’t as stupid as his men. Seeing what had happened to them, he had already backed away and begun to run. He had been standing in the relative safety of the “airlock” between the outer and inner automatic glass doors until two of Bob’s shots struck the shatterproof glass near the door frame with a loud “Palang, Palang,” and spider-webbed the glass surface. Bob thought the third round hit the man, probably in the shoulder or upper back, because something suddenly knocked him down. He fell between the outer doors, screened by the thick glass of the inner doors, but he didn’t stay on the floor long. He managed to get back up to his feet. Bent over and obviously in pain, he looked back at Bob and ran out into the parking lot.
That only left the gunman still hiding behind the checkout counter. After all the hairy firefights Ace and Bob had been through together, several quick hand signals were all it took for them to switch tactics and move to the offensive. Ace moved quickly, advancing along the perpendicular front aisle with his borrowed rifle held tightly against his shoulder to flank the counters. To an expert infantryman who was accustomed to using his own weapon which he had personally cleaned, practiced with, zeroed, and loaded, the thought of using a ‘pickup’ rifle of questionable derivation was heresy. It felt awkward and uncomfortable to say the least, but he made do. The rifle moved back and forth in sync with his eyes as he looked down between each aisle, while Bob did the same from the opposite angle.
“Drop the weapon and come out now!” Bob yelled to the man.
“This is your last warning,” Ace bellowed.
“All of your friends are dead, and you’re about to join them.”
“All right, all right,” they heard a voice call out from the next aisle, followed by the clattering of an automatic rifle landing on the tile floor, as two hands that shot up over the edge of the counter. “Ah’m coming out, ah’m coming out, don’t shoot!”
“Lie down across the counter,” Bob ordered. The gunman was African American, dressed in a complete US Army Combat Uniform, and he quickly complied. Ace stepped over, searched him, and stripped him of his belt, which he used to tie the young man’s arms behind him. He then tied his boot laces together, completely incapacitating the man. As he did, Bob took a closer look at the uniform he was wearing. It was well-worn and it all looked real. So was the M-4 he had been firing.
Bob reached into the man’s hip pocket, pulled out his wallet, and saw an equally real-looking Army ID card. “Billingsley?” Bob asked and saw the man look up at him, which was all he needed to know. He pointed his finger at the young man and told him, “If
you move one inch off this counter, you’re a dead man. Got that?” Billingsley quickly nodded and slumped down. It was obvious that whatever fight had been in him was completely gone now.
Outside, George Enderby continued running and stumbling away through the parking lot, clutching his right side and shoulder. Behind him was chaos. The commissary shoppers were beginning to stream out the doors, running in every direction, screaming. Enderby stopped, desperately looking around for help. In the fifth row, he finally saw Henry Shaw standing between two cars, glaring at him as Enderby ran to meet him.
“What happened?” Shaw demanded to know as his anger built to a towering rage. “Don’t tell me you failed me, Enderby. A commissary? Where are the rest of our men?”
“Gone… shot… most of them dead…”
“Gone? Dead? All nine of them? My ‘strike force’? You couldn’t even take down a stinking commissary?”
“We attacked as you ordered, Shaw, and they shot a lot of people in there, like you told us to, but then, out of nowhere, two men…”
“Two men? Two men! There were nine of you in there, Enderby! I was depending on them, and on you; and now you tell me they are all gone? How?”
Enderby leaned against a car, breathing heavily. “One of them was that man who came into the Muslim Center and pushed us around.”
“Burke? The one you said was named Burke? And he took all nine of you down? Who is he? Superman?”
“There was another man with him too, not just him; but I’ll never forget his face. When I looked at him, he… he…”
“Yes, and I’m sure he’ll never forget your face, either,” Shaw answered. “Where’s your car?” Enderby raised his hand and pointed toward an old maroon Pontiac two rows back. “Give me the keys,” Shaw demanded. Enderby reached into his pocket and then paused halfway, looking up at him puzzled. That was when Shaw raised his Beretta and shot Enderby in the center of his chest. “That’s what happens when you fail me.”
Shaw took Enderby’s keys from his pocket, walked over to the Pontiac, and drove it around to the back of the lot, where he parked it next to his Peugeot. The Pontiac drove like a four-wheeled piece of crap, Shaw thought. It had torn, uncomfortable bucket seats, it started rough, and it spewed hideous black clouds of exhaust. Still, it was time for him to change wheels. He had thought about taking Stephanie’s car, or even Pendergrass’, but he suspected they were already red-hot, as his beloved Peugeot would soon be. Enderby’s old Pontiac would have to do, so he got out, stepped over to his Peugeot, and opened the trunk. In a box, wrapped in a towel, he had two more of his one-pound C-4 explosive charges, ready to go, with cell phones attached. He transferred them to the trunk of the Pontiac, figuring they wouldn’t be there very long.
Bob heard what sounded like a gunshot outside but ignored it. There was more than enough to keep him busy inside the commissary. He glanced at the front doors and finally saw the bright staccato of red and blue emergency flashers, accompanied by the wail of different types of sirens from police cars, fire trucks, and ambulances all converging on the building.
“Here comes the goddamned cavalry,” Ace grumbled as he lowered his rifle. “ ’Bout freakin’ time.” Like any good Platoon Sergeant, Ace quickly evaluated and took charge of the situation. “The MPs and medics’ll be all over this place in a heartbeat,” he shouted to Bob as he tossed his M-4 out the front door. “You need to do the same, Ghost. No telling who they’ll decide to start shooting.” He then set about organizing the survivors to tend to the wounded ones, and setting up a quick triage for the wounded.
“Are you hit?” Bob asked him as he did what Ace said and tossed his M-4 out the door.
Ace looked down at the blood on his arms and shirt and said, “Not mine. Why don’t you go back and make sure the girls are okay. I still know most of the MPs, and I can explain things to them, before they go nuts on us.” Ace pointed at Bob’s shirt and face and frowned. “But what about you? Are you hit?”
Bob looked down and saw that his shirt was also splattered with red. As he well knew, the human body can react to a bullet wound in strange ways. Usually you know when you’ve been hit, but sometimes you don’t. He quickly ran his finger through the thick red liquid on his chest and tasted it. “Spaghetti sauce, probably Mama Mia or Chef Boyardee, but thanks for asking,” he grinned as he sprinted away toward the back of the store.
He knew he had a problem as soon as he reached the aisle he had come up, and ran quickly through all the broken glass and shot-up canned goods. The gunman with the knife in his throat was still lying there, dead; but the clown he hit in the head with the meat cleaver was gone. The last time Bob saw him, he was lying on the floor with his eyes rolled up in his head, out cold. Now, he was missing and so was the meat cleaver. Bob had tossed the M-4 away, but he remembered he still had one carving knife tucked in his belt. That would have to do, he thought as he pulled it out and ran full-out toward the fresh meat department.
His brain immediately shifted to “Full-Burke Action Figure Mode,” as his guys used to call it. The knife was out and he was gliding on the balls of his feet as he blew through the dual swinging doors and into the butcher-prep, expecting to find himself in deadly, hand-to-hand combat on the other side. But as his eyes swung back and forth, taking in and processing everything that was happening in the room, he quickly realized he need not have bothered. The guy with the “pre-existing” linear dent in his forehead was lying spread-eagled on the floor, out cold, with his eyes rolled up in his head again, a broken and bloody nose, and a second big knot on the left front corner of his forehead. Dorothy stood off to one side of him, holding the meat cleaver with both hands, ready to begin chopping off body parts; while Linda stood off to the other side, holding what looked like a packaged, frozen, two-pound T-bone steak over her shoulder, yelling down at him, and ready to hit him again.
“Cease-fire, ladies,” Bob laughed, “he’s not going anywhere.”
“Easy for you to say!” Linda turned her head and glared back at him. “You leave us back here by ourselves, unarmed…”
“You had the T-bone; looks like that’s all you needed,” he pointed to the huge slab of frozen steak in her hands.
“Very funny!”
“Actually,” Dorothy corrected him, “he came in waving that meat cleaver at us, and she caught him flush with a frozen, six-ounce petite filet. You’d be proud. She threw it at his head like a Nolan Ryan fastball. Caught him on the honker and put him down like he’d been poleaxed. You teach her to throw like that?”
“No, I’m more of a lambchop man myself.”
“Very funny,” Linda snapped. “I heard gunfire. What’s going on?”
“Not to worry. Everything’s taken care of,” Bob smiled.
“Everything’s taken care of?” he heard a woman’s loud, angry voice call out as the swinging doors behind him opened and CID Special Agent Sharmayne Phillips stepped into the room in a bent legged shooting position. She held her Beretta out in front of her at the ready as she asked, “Like the lady said, Burke, what the hell’s going on here?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The Fort Bragg North Commissary
Halfway back in the crowded parking lot, in the center of a middle row, between a big SUV and a boxy minivan, Henry Shaw sat slumped in the front seat of Enderby’s maroon Pontiac, once again watching events unfold over the top of his dashboard. This time, however, things had not gone according to his plan. Far from it. This was to have been his triumphal moment. Instead, he had just lost his nine best men, and the only thing on his mind was revenge. Someone would pay for this. No, many would pay, he swore. The first had been George Enderby, who proved to be disappointingly incompetent. But he was the first, not the last.
Shaw wasn’t certain why he stayed at the commissary this long. It was probably a morbid curiosity of his to watch the dead and the dying that went way back with him. Beyond that, he wanted to see how the Army reacted to this attack, for future reference. That was why he ke
pt his eyes on the front doors and windows of the commissary, watching as people continued to stream out into the parking lot. Many of them were bloodied, and a number reached the pavement only to collapse on the sidewalk. It all looked so artificial under the blue-white light from the tall mercury vapor pole lights scattered around the lot.
As the first emergency vehicles arrived on the scene, their bright red and blue flashing lights added an eerie tension. The first three were MP squad cars. Then came an undercover MP car with a dashboard flasher, followed by the first of a string of ambulances and fire trucks. They all had their flashers and sirens blazing, as did the civilian Fayetteville emergency vehicles that arrived to help. That was fine, he thought. They were so focused on the commissary and what had happened inside, they hadn’t thought about the outside yet. Sooner or later, however, someone would trip over poor Enderby’s body four aisles away from the door. Henry Shaw wanted to be long gone before that happened, before they set up their road blocks, and before they locked down the post again.
Too bad, he thought, as he looked at his watch, but all good things must end and it was time for him to leave. After all, the night was young and there were a few more people he wanted to kill tonight to make a clean sweep of it. However, as he sat up and turned the key in the ignition switch, he saw another car come racing down the center aisle, stopping a hundred feet or so from the front door. It was an olive-drab Army sedan, with a red pennant on its bumper that bore two silver stars. My, my, Shaw smiled. Perhaps he was hasty. Perhaps he shouldn’t leave quite yet after all.
As soon as the sedan stopped, the front passenger side door flew open. A big sergeant got out and waved the driver away. He then turned to open the passenger-side rear door, but the man who had been sitting back there had already opened it and jumped out. Both wore Army Class A dress green service uniforms. The one on the rear seat had glittering silver stars on his shoulder tabs and his flat, dress hat was festooned with gold braid. He set off toward the commissary at a double-time pace. The sergeant put his hat on too, fell in behind, and tried to keep up. As he got closer to the lights at the front of the store, Shaw saw enough bright-yellow stripes and rockers on his sleeve to see he was at least a sergeant major. The general was a small man, but he had more rows of ribbons on his uniform than Shaw had ever seen. The sergeant was tall and muscular with his own gaudy display of stripes, medallions, and ribbons. In the dark, Shaw wasn’t sure who either of them were, but that was the same general and the same sedan he saw at the Airborne and Special Operations Museum bomb site with Burke talking to Pendergrass, the Fayetteville cops, and that MP woman. Clearly this general was a key part of the unholy alliance that was now arrayed against him. He had eliminated Pendergrass, and now he had the chance to knock down one more of the dominoes.
Burke's Revenge: Bob Burke Suspense Thriller #3 (Bob Burke Action Adventure Novels) Page 34
