Rules of War

by Matthew Betley

  * * *

  Nick chased after Amira down the hallway, only two steps behind. They passed the guest bathroom on the right as he heard John scream up at them, and his detective’s sharp mind processed the warning instantly. He’s going to shoot into the ceiling. And then the only, singular thought in his mind was—Amira.

  Fueled by an all-encompassing primal need to protect his daughter, he reached her as she stopped at the entrance to the master bedroom and turned toward him to see how far behind he was. Concern and fear—for him, not for herself—shone on her face, but he didn’t have the luxury of responding.

  Loud bangs emanated from downstairs as puffs of carpet fibers and chunks of plywood kicked up behind him in the hallway. God, forgive me, Nick thought, extended his arms, leaned forward, and shoved his daughter, the last true love in his life, out of harm’s way, backward into the master bedroom.

  One more bang reached his ears, and he felt a punch to the right side of his chest. Even as he fell into the bedroom behind her, he knew instantly that he’d been shot, but he felt no pain, only the power of the blow. Just a little too slow to save yourself, but she’s safe, he thought, and collapsed onto the carpet.

  But then the sharp, burning, suffocating pain burst from his chest, and he realized the wound was serious, likely fatal. He felt weakness spread throughout his body, as if lulling each part of it to sleep.

  A commotion ensued below them in the kitchen, and Nick realized John had engaged the attacker. There’s no time. She needs to help him, or I won’t be the only one she loses today. She doesn’t deserve that. She doesn’t deserve any of this.

  “No!” Amira screamed, agony breaking palpably in her voice. “Daddy!” she cried in the voice of a panicked little girl, desperate to save the life of the man who’d raised her. She reached behind her and yanked a comforter off the bed and placed it under his head. “No. No. No,” she repeated, as if denying the reality in front of her. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she felt the opening of a rift inside her, threatening to swallow her whole.

  “Listen to me, honey,” Nick said, and coughed, and he felt his breath rattle in his chest. “No matter what happens to me, you have to get the gun and help John. He’s downstairs and fighting for his life. This is your world,” he said, his voice sounding weaker by the moment. “You can’t save me. You know it. I know it. I feel it. I know I don’t have much time.”

  Amira wept, held his right hand in hers, and cradled his head in her left arm. She looked into the eyes of her father, and all she saw was love, the love of a father for a daughter. She cried harder.

  “Listen to me,” Nick said. “If I have to go, there is no other way I would’ve wanted than to save you and give you a fighting chance. Do you understand me?” he asked, his eyes burning brightly.

  “Oh, Daddy . . .” Amira said between gasps of pain and tears.

  “Stop it. Stop it right now. You have to help John, or you’re going to join me, and I can’t bear . . . the thought of it.” He felt himself fading, fast. “Do you understand me? You need to do your job.”

  Amira was torn. The undying love for her father waged a war with the seething rage racing through her veins. She nodded, acknowledging that the man who’d given her advice, who’d taught her how to ride a bike, who’d encouraged her to pursue dance, and who’d sacrificed his time for her, always, was right one last time. “I love you, Daddy” was all she said. “I love you.”

  “And I love you, forever, no matter where I am. I’ll see you again,” Nick said, as blood ran from the corners of his mouth, his shirt already a thick, wet mess. His eyes fluttered, opened widely, and stared lovingly into his beautiful daughter’s face. “Because you’re my princess . . . my Amira,” he said quietly as the life left his body, and his vacant eyes stared at the ceiling.

  A guttural, tortured cry rose in her throat, hot tears mixing with her father’s blood, but she heard a loud crash from the kitchen. John, and her heart raced once again in fear, not for her father, who was somehow gone, but for the other man she loved.

  She placed her father’s head on the comforter and closed his eyes. She kissed him on the forehead, only wishing to remain on the floor and hold him, but she knew she couldn’t. There was no time. She inhaled deeply and allowed the rage and fury to soothe her broken heart. She strode to the gun safe on the floor and punched in 1-4-2-2 for her parents’ birthdays. The door sprang forward, the top coming to rest on the carpet, and Amira reached in and grabbed her father’s black Colt M1911 .45-caliber pistol. The weight, the heft of it, felt solid in her hands, as if begging her to use it to avenge its owner’s death, a gunslinger’s cry for vengeance. She pulled the slide back slightly, spotted the silver casing of the round in the chamber, and let the slide move forward. She cocked back the hammer with her right thumb, placed her forefinger straight and off the trigger along the trigger guard, and turned. As she passed her father’s body, she said, “I love you, Daddy, until the end,” and strode into the fray of the battle below.

  CHAPTER 39

  John struck the exposed left side of the shooter’s face, and his knuckles left three white smears across the green and brown camouflage paint. He grabbed the barrel of the AR-15 behind the pistol grip and yanked backward as he pushed the gunman backward and slammed him into the granite island. He felt the jarring impact through the man’s body, and the shooter’s grip on the long gun slackened.

  John reached up and grabbed the collapsible stock of the long gun, and with as much strength as he could summon from the off-balance position he was in, he yanked the weapon forward, extending the shooter’s arms out, and then viciously slammed it backward like a rubber band contracting. The butt of the weapon smashed into the shooter’s face, split his lip in half, and shattered his top three teeth.

  John was fueled by rage, the thought that this mercenary had just tried to shoot the woman he loved fresh in his mind. Pulling the AR-15 toward him and to the left, he rotated slightly and delivered a short side-stomp to the man’s left knee. The man dropped, and John wrestled the AR-15 out of the gloved hands.

  The shooter landed on his right knee, but rather than yield, he shot his hand toward his right hip. Oh no you don’t, motherfucker, John thought, whipped the AR-15 back around, and squeezed the trigger several times in quick succession as the man raised a black Glock from a drop holster. He only made it six inches before four rounds struck him in the left side of the chest, and he slumped against the side of the kitchen island.

  More glass exploded as rounds from the backyard tore apart the remaining pieces on the left side of the sliding door. Several bullets struck the walls of the hallway, but John ignored the fire, raised the AR-15, and fired several shots in response.

  Nothing more came from the backyard, and he heard screaming and crying from upstairs. Amira. Please, God, let her be okay. His immediate plan was simple—wait down here to prevent anyone else from infiltrating the house. Thirty more seconds passed.

  He stared into the backyard, where shadows had fallen across the landscape like washed-out canvases of gray, ominous and foreboding. Nothing moved. They’re out there somewhere.

  John peered down the hallway and opened his mouth to speak when a second shooter in a camouflage tree suit appeared in the destroyed front entranceway. The man’s AR-15 moved upward, tracking on him, even as John adjusted his own weapon. This is going to be close, he thought, and realized he might actually lose the long-rifle quick-draw contest in which he found himself. “Shooter!” he screamed, hoping that at least he’d warn Amira and her father upstairs.

  * * *

  Amira was cold, not from a sudden drop in the temperature, but from the way she’d compartmentalized her emotions less than a minute before. It’d taken every ounce of strength to resist the temptation to stay upstairs and hold her father, even though he was gone. Two things kept her moving—her father had sacrificed himself for her, and she was going to do everything in her power to honor that sacrifice . . . as well as make the evil ba
stards who had brought this horror to them pay. But to do that, she needed to focus, which meant removing herself emotionally from the situation. For the next few minutes, Amira, you need to do your job. There will be time for everything else later.

  She exhaled and left the room, the Colt M1911 reassuring in her hands. She quickly and quietly headed back down the hallway. No sound came from downstairs. She’d heard more shots after her father had been struck, and she hoped John had been the one dealing death.

  She reached the stairs and started down them, placing one foot along the edge of the carpet runner on each step to prevent the boards from squeaking. She passed the landing and turned left, descending a few more stairs.

  The kitchen came into view, and she saw a body near the island and sighed in relief. John, one; bad guys, none. Two more steps, and she spotted the lower half of John, including the AR-15 in his hands.

  She opened her mouth to speak, when a scuffle from the front porch sounded loudly in the foyer. John shouted, “Shooter!” and started to react, raising the AR-15 toward the front door. He’s not going to make it.

  With no other options, Amira Cerone, functioning on adrenaline and training, dove down the last two steps. She opened fire midair and struck the new threat in the right knee, which disintegrated in a red puff of mist and bone. She landed hard on her right side, which absorbed the impact, and fired two more times.

  The .45-caliber reports thundered throughout the house and echoed across the front yard. Normally a world-class shot, her dive had dropped her aim, and the two slugs tore into the shooter’s stomach, and he fell sideways and backward on top of the ruined knee. He shrieked from the initial agony of the crippling injury and gutshots, and then he began to moan incoherently.

  Amira stood up, the M1911 trained on the writhing man. She turned around and found John staring at her. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  He nodded, noticing the blood on the front of her green Under Armour shirt. “You?”

  “Yes,” she said, dreading the next question.

  “Your father?” John asked, already knowing the answer.

  For the briefest of moments, her features faltered, her eyes seemed to crumple inward from the pain, and she only shook her head, refusing to voice what he already knew.

  “Amira, I am so, so sorry,” John said quietly. There was nothing more to say.

  “I know,” Amira said, and regained her composure, turned around, and strode defiantly down the hallway.

  She reached the dying shooter dressed in camouflage and stared down. He was suffering, and she considered letting him die slowly on the floor, his blood pooling under his ruined leg and torso. But after what he and his team had done, his mere presence and existence was an affront to her. You deserve to suffer, but even more, you don’t deserve to live.

  “Hey,” Amira said firmly. “Hey.”

  The man opened his eyes and looked up into the merciless, beautiful face of Amira Cerone.

  “Do you see me?” she asked.

  As pain racked his body, the shattered knee a throbbing black hole of concentrated pain, he nodded, not daring to defy the warrior who stood over him.

  “Good. I want to be the last thing you see before I send you to hell,” she said calmly, raised the Colt, and fired three times into his chest, killing him.

  It didn’t make her feel better. She’d known it wouldn’t, but at least she knew one more killer had been removed from the face of the earth.

  “Amira, there’s one more out there,” John said. “Please step away from the door. I don’t want him taking any potshots at you.”

  “Nor you,” she replied, and smiled briefly. She started toward John, suddenly eager for his embrace, and he moved toward her.

  Before they met in the middle of the hall, the sound of squealing tires reached them from down the street.

  John’s eyes widened in frustration. “Oh no. The cops.”

  “Let’s go,” Amira said, and the two of them exited her father’s house through the ruined front door just in time to witness the second ambush of the night.

  CHAPTER 40

  Calvert County Sheriff’s Deputy First Class Shea Jenkins was exhausted. He was at the tail end of his third twelve-hour day when the call came through his Motorola APX 8000 XE in-dash radio. “Be advised. We have a report of armed gunmen in the Rolling Knolls subdivision. The caller, a teenager down the street, states three men in camouflage with some type of assault rifles are approaching a home through the woods. He spotted them while flying a drone. He called the homeowner, one Nicolo Cerone, and his daughter answered and told him to call the police immediately.”

  Three men with assault weapons? What the hell? An eight-year veteran of the Coast Guard, Shea had spent his time conducting counternarcotics drug interdictions as a team leader on Tactical Law Enforcement Team South at the southern tip of the peninsula in Opa-locka, Florida. The last time he’d seen hostiles in camouflage, a four-man team from Cuba had evaded the cutter he was attached to, beached their powerboat on a small key island north of Key Largo, and tried to escape his team. Petty Officer Second Class Jenkins—he was amused by the fact that he’d moved up in class at the sheriff’s office—and his team had pursued on their RHIB, landed a few minutes behind them, and stalked them across the small island of mangroves. It hadn’t ended well for the bad guys—two dead, one wounded, and one surrendered.

  “Seriously?” Shea asked, talking in plain language.

  “The caller sounded serious and scared,” the dispatcher replied, but promptly added, “Stand by.” A ten-second pause ensued. “Just received another call from the same neighborhood. He’s reporting shots fired. Scrambling all units to the location now, but you’re the closest.”

  Jesus Christ. What the hell is popping off in Calvert tonight? Shea thought. Normally, a Wednesday night consisted of bar fights, drug overdoses, and traffic stops, but it sounded like someone had gone full Rambo in the rural suburbs. He flipped the light and siren switches on his console, checked the rearview mirror, and floored the pursuit-rated Ford Explorer into the left lane north on Route 4. “Roger. Rolling with lights and sirens but will cut them when I’m in the subdivision. Who’s closest after me?”

  “Deputy Phillips. Looks like he’s thirty to sixty seconds behind you.” The rookie, Shea thought. Good to go. If I have to get into a gunfight, he’ll do. The twenty-three-year-old deputy was cocky and brash and not shaken easily, and Shea didn’t think he’d cave under the pressure.

  “Roger,” Shea responded. “Will advise when I’m on scene. Out.” What a way to end a shift . . .

  As if reading his mind, the female dispatcher added, “Be safe. Godspeed.” She ended the communication and started coordinating with the other eleven units that were on duty.

  Deputy Shea Jenkins calmed his mind and exhaled, preparing himself for the unknown. Never a dull moment, he thought. It was why he loved his job. He just hoped tonight wouldn’t be his last night on it.

  The Ford Explorer raced up Route 4 in lane one, as the police referred to the left lane, passing post-rush-hour traffic. Two minutes out. The cars continued to move over ahead of him, and he hoped no elderly driver or subcontractor who’d started drinking early on a Wednesday afternoon held him up.

  Ninety seconds later, he slowed down and turned left in a lane that cut through the grass median to enter the Rolling Knolls subdivision. The tires gripped the pavement, and he cut in front of traffic that stopped to let him through, their headlights in the dusk flashing across the interior of his Explorer.

  Shea grabbed the microphone on the Motorola and said, “Entering the subdivision now.”

  “Roger, Unit 23,” the dispatcher replied.

  Shea cut the lights and the sirens and accelerated to 55 mph. The large homes sped by, and a half mile later he saw the street he needed to turn onto—Burning Leaf.

  He turned left and slowed dramatically, although not enough to prevent the tires from squealing around the turn. Sloppy. Get your shit
together.

  The house was located at the end of the cul-de-sac, and as he approached, he saw the front door wide open with damage to the frame. This is real, he thought. Not some prank or 911 hang-up.

  He stopped the SUV in front of the house two hundred yards away, grabbed the microphone once again, and said, “On scene. Parked a few hundred feet away. Front door wide open. No sounds of gunfire. Exiting the vehicle and moving in.”

  Shea reached into the back seat and pulled out a SCAR-H CQC 5.56mm assault rifle. The sheriff’s office had established a relationship with the Belgian-based FN Herstal group that provided weapons to militaries and law enforcement agencies across the world. As a member of Calvert County’s Special Operations Team, Shea was fortunate enough to have some serious firepower in the lethal form of the SCAR-H with a thirteen-inch shortened barrel for close-quarters combat. His heavy vest was in the back, but he didn’t want to waste the precious seconds to put it on. He hoped his standard black Kevlar would stop whatever was being used in the upper-middle-class neighborhood.

  He stepped out of the vehicle, hoping Sam was close behind him. But Shea also knew that every second mattered. Unlike that cowardly sheriff’s department in Florida, Calvert County was proud of its aggressive, confident, and capable force. They never backed down, and they always went in hard.

  Deputy Shea Jenkins started running down the street, confidence building with each step. A man and a woman suddenly emerged from the front door. He saw blood on the front of her shirt. She held a pistol, and the man held an AR-15. Oh shit, he thought, praying to God that she was the owner’s daughter and not a hostile.

  Unfortunately, Shea never saw the real threat that stood near the bushes on the side of the house. He heard the loud thwacks from his left and felt two tremendous blows—one to each leg—followed by searing pain. He screamed in shock and surprise as he collapsed to the concrete.