by David Nees
Better get moving.
She turned and ran down to the next intersection. She would go around the block and continue, but she would move more carefully. She didn’t want to risk another encounter. The sound of the gunfire would have carried, and now someone knew she was on the streets. Other patrols might be more alert and she might not have the ability to duck and run next time.
She made her way around the block and cut across into an overgrown parking lot.
A half hour later she got to the building.
Billy ran through the streets. He had a lot of distance to cover to get to the east side of the downtown area housing Stansky’s headquarters. His fury drove him. He was not trying to be stealthy. He actually looked forward to an encounter; it would give him an opportunity to lash out with the automatic weapon he was carrying.
As he started down one block, a patrol of six men stepped into the intersection. They shouted for him to stop. Billy had the M16 set to automatic. He began firing short bursts as he ran towards the men. The unfamiliar weapon tried to jump and climb in his hands. He tightened his grip and kept it under control, sweeping the men in short bursts as he ran at them. Two of them went down before the rest began to return fire. He zig-zagged a little but kept going at a full run straight at the men and kept firing. Two more men went down and the last two turned and fled across the intersection. Billy ran past the fallen men as the others disappeared down the side street. He ignored them. He would not be diverted from his mission. His focus was getting to the headquarters and Stansky. He wanted to be there and find him when the attack began.
When he had gotten well east of the downtown compound, he turned and headed north two blocks before turning back to the west, more carefully now. The run and the fight had burned off some of the craziness. He walked, and he kept a sharp eye out for any patrols, always noticing where he could duck for cover if a patrol came by. When he was two blocks out, he came to his first clear view of the barricade in the street. There were heads and rifles poking up along it. Too many. Stansky had a sizeable group to defend his compound.
Billy stopped. He didn’t think he had been seen. But this route wouldn’t work, and staying around could get him shot. He carefully backed up a block and headed north. He would go two blocks and then try another smaller street going west. Maybe he could find a weaker, less heavily defended place to get into the compound. He turned onto a narrow side street, but again, within two blocks, he saw that it was closed as he neared the compound. The barricade here consisted of three cars lined up across the street and sidewalk. It looked like a hasty assemblage, but it was probably adequate for a minor side street. It would slow down any motorized assault while providing cover for the militia to fire on the attackers jammed in the narrow passage.
Careful to stay out of sight, Billy found a niche with a door set into it and sat back. He was breathing heavily; sweat covered his face and arms. His initial recklessness fueled by his rage had dissipated, replaced now with a hunter’s cunning. He had to figure out a way to get inside the compound and then find Stansky.
After some thought, he decided he would wait until the attack began. The extra confusion might allow him an opportunity to get inside the barricade. Would Stansky be in the thick of the battle or would he hang back at his headquarters? Billy pondered that question as he waited for the attack to begin.
When Catherine got to the block she had chosen, she entered it through a narrow alley. She stopped at a tall building. There was an alley door. It had two small windows in it, with vertical bars over the glass. Catherine thrust the butt of her rifle between the bars of the window; the third whack broke the glass. After knocking out the shards, she carefully slipped her arm inside. It was a tight fit, but she was able to reach down and flip the dead bolt.
The door opened onto a stairwell. She closed the door behind her, so that it would be less likely to be noticed, and headed up the stairs. Her only source of light was the alley door windows, but the stairs were a back-and-forth pattern she could navigate in the growing dark as she ascended. At the top, the tenth floor as she counted, she opened the stairwell door and entered a corridor. She was at one end. There was a window at each end which dimly lit the hallway. Doors lined both sides, most of them ajar. More light came from them.
How do I get on the roof?
She walked down the hall, trying the knobs of the doors that were closed. None were locked. All but two of the doors opened onto offices. The only exceptions, at the midpoint of the hallway, were the restrooms. Catherine peeked in both, but it was too dark to see anything. There was nothing here.
She headed back to the door to the stairs and went back onto the landing.
She had not yet released the doorknob when she made out another door in the wall to her left, the side across from the stairs, just past the door she was holding. She stared at it. There was a sign on it. There was very little light coming from behind her, but the letters were big and blocky, and after a few seconds she was sure what she was looking at:
ROOF ACCESS ONLY
She smiled.
Looking closer, as best she could while holding the hall door open, she could also see that the door had a heavy padlock on it.
She went back out into the hallway and looked for a janitor’s closet for anything she could use to pry the lock. She found nothing, so she returned to the stairwell. She wedged open the door with her cap to let light into the stairwell. She retreated four steps down the stairs and lay down against them with her head and rifle peeking over the landing. Then she aimed her carbine at the padlock and fired. The shot broke the lock and the bullet ricocheted off one wall before embedding itself high in the opposite wall.
She retrieved her cap, hurriedly pulled open the door, and climbed the metal steps behind it. They ended in a small landing with a door that opened to the roof.
The dazzling sunlight blinded Catherine after the darkness. She waited in the doorway for her eyes to adjust. She put her cap back on and pulled the bill down over her eyes. She wished she had sunglasses. Shooting east so I should be okay, she told herself.
She stepped out onto the roof. It was a wide, flat expanse of beige gravel, broken only by the hut she had just emerged from and two air-conditioning units to her left. Ahead of her, she could see the top of Joe Stansky’s bank building jutting up in the distance. Along the edge of the roof there was a low parapet about three feet high. It would provide good cover for shooting.
She laid her carbine down just inside the door of the hut, crept to the wall, and knelt down behind it. She peeked over the parapet. From the roof she had an excellent view of the downtown area.
Pulling out her spotting scope from her backpack, she scanned the barricades Stansky had erected. Her position was only one block from the edge of the four-block barricaded area. The rooftops in the block ahead of her were low enough that Catherine could see most of the barricades to the south and north. From her height, she had a perfect view of the space behind them. She could see men moving around, bringing out supplies and ammunition. Further back, her view of the compound was interrupted by the bank building and by another, shorter building across the center street to the left of it, which she understood to be the militia headquarters.
Two other buildings gave her concern. They were similar in height to her building. One was to her left, at the northwest corner of the barricade, exactly where the northern attack would hit. The other was just to the right of the main street running up the middle of the compound. It was at the edge of the compound nearest her. It cut off some of her view to the right, although Catherine felt confident she could see enough of the barricades on that side to help the southern attack.
Joe’s bank tower rose above all. It was at least eight stories taller than her rooftop. Its lower stories were half-hidden by the right-hand tall building that faced toward her, but she could see the ground floor entrance on the street that ran up the center.
Catherine stiffened. Next to Joe’s tower, in the
middle of the street, three men were setting up a mortar.
Looking carefully, she could see three other mortar emplacements in the street, closer to her than the first one she had seen. They were surrounded by low mounds of rubble and debris. To shield the mortars from street-level gunfire, she thought.
She looked for more. In the middle of the block to the right she could see part of an empty lot. As she watched, two men carried mortars out into the lot, while two others followed with loaded wheelbarrows and shovels.
She remembered the mortars on the slope, and a violent shiver went through her. Joe’s people were ready.
They’ll need spotters to be effective.
Her alarm at seeing the mortars now turned to a more immediate concern. She focused on the two tall buildings to her left and right that were the same height as her own.
Sure enough, there were figures moving about.
On both rooftops.
She hunched down behind the parapet. How would they communicate with the mortars? She didn’t know but they had to be dealt with.
They were looking down, watching the streets beyond the barricade. They hadn’t seen her come out on the roof.
She turned and sat back against the wall to contemplate her position. The spotters would be armed. If they discovered her, they could take her out, or they could keep her pinned down enough that she would be effectively neutralized as a sniper.
She might not even be able to get back to the stairs so she could find a new position. She glanced back at the stairway door. This was a big roof; the door was twenty yards from her position, and she would be out in the open once she moved back from the parapet wall.
Maybe even if she crawled. The two rooftops looked to be the same height as the one she was on. She could not see the surface of their roofs beyond their parapets, but could they see hers? It was impossible to be sure.
Getting back to the door would be a dangerous gauntlet to run, with a high probability of getting shot. She knew she could make such a shot. Could they?
She dared not assume that the men on the rooftops would be lousy shots.
And if they saw her now, with the streets quiet, it would be simple for them to send a group straight to her building.
Whichever way it went, she might never get into the fight.
She ground her teeth. She could cause serious disruption in the militia’s defenses. When the attack started, the confusion would mask her initial shooting. The battle would allow her to keep shooting into the barricades. Effective sniping could pin down a lot of fighters. She and Bird had slowed down three truckloads of armed men with some well-placed shots and the fear of more. Slowed them down enough that they had never reached the farms.
I’ll have to take them out first. Otherwise they’ll pin me down.
But not until the sound of her shots would be covered.
She settled in to watch and wait.
Chapter 63
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L eo was missing. Leo had set up the defenses. He was the guy who had been studying this kind of thing, strategy and tactics, ever since Joe had put him in charge of taking over the militia and running it. He had gone off to take care of some business, something about his woman, and he should have been back already.
That worried Joe. It wasn’t like Leo. Not when there was serious business to be done.
Let alone this.
What no one but Joe and a few others had known was that Joe had a few working military radios. He had gotten them from the armory raids.
Joe and Leo had kept the existence of the radios a deep secret, even from the militia. The devices had stayed safely stored away in a private area in Joe’s tower, charged but hidden. The radios represented too much of a potential surprise advantage to risk wasting for trivial reasons.
But Leo had seemed sure that a big problem was about to appear, and over the years Joe had learned to listen to him. He had gone to bed the previous evening mulling over Leo’s preparations, and he had woken up early that morning thinking about the radios. If the threat really was as serious as Leo said, then there was no point in holding onto their ace in the hole. It was time to pull it out while the game was on. So the first thing Joe had done that morning was to take four of the radios and send two of them out to the guards at the two main entrances, with instructions to keep in constant touch with him.
He was barricaded into his downtown area with most of his men, but he was nervous. A street fight, a shooting or a robbery, he was good at that; used to it. But this strategic maneuvering for what could be a major battle left him uneasy. He needed Leo.
Joe had finally sent a patrol out with another radio to fetch the SOB. The patrol had gone to Leo’s hotel apartment and discovered that Leo had apparently moved to other quarters. Now they were looking for him. Joe could understand the move; it made sense for security, but why didn’t he know about it? The guard at the hotel had just come on shift and said that Leo had moved somewhere “on the south side.” They were headed that way now.
When Joe got a hold of Leo, he was going to let him know he was pissed. But this was so unlike him that Joe couldn’t shake an uneasiness growing inside.
The radio on the desk squawked again. Joe scowled at it and picked it up. “Headquarters. We just got attacked.”
Joe tensed. “Which gate are you? How many?”
“We still didn’t find Leo. But we got hit. There’s only two of us left.”
It wasn’t either of the gates. It was the men he’d sent after Leo. “Who hit you?”
“One guy. I think it was that guy from the valley that Goodman hired to hunt. Looks like he’s changed sides. Or else he’s gone crazy.”
“Who?” Joe said incredulously. He tried to remember. He thought he remembered something about whiskey. An expert. Someone from the valley. He swore. That was another wild card he didn’t need. “Did you get him?”
“No, he’s gone, headed east far as we can tell. We got no idea where Leo is. You want us to keep looking?”
Joe growled out loud as he paced across his office, the radio clenched in his fist. Leo, you bastard, I need you!
“Keep looking,” he ordered. “Southside section. You don’t find anything in another hour, come back. And don’t lose that radio.”
A live courier came in to report. Distant gunfire had been heard far across the city, location unknown; it had ended after less than a minute. No details about it. Joe nodded and wondered dully if it had been the same incident or another one. He was tempted to order a patrol out to investigate, just to do something, but he didn’t think sending men all around town made sense with an attack coming. Damn it! Leo had the plan. He needed him here.
He waited some more.
The radio came to life. “Hello! Headquarters, come in!”
Joe thought he recognized the hoarse voice. “Headquarters here. Did you find Leo?”
“No! But we’ve got this guy! He says he was a guard for Leo and he was attacked!”
“What?”
“He came running right at us. He says he was at Leo’s and a whole bunch of ‘em went upstairs. I still don’t know where he was, but they all went upstairs and this guy says there was a firefight, and then more of ‘em kept going upstairs. They all came down except Leo… I think Leo’s—”
The sound of gunfire reached the windows of Joe’s office.
The two militia officers by the door stiffened and looked at each other, and one turned and ran out toward the stairs. Joe rose from his chair and moved to the window. The gunfire continued. It seemed to be coming from two directions.
The battle was on.
Chapter 64
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W hen the gunfire erupted, Catherine rolled over into a kneeling position and brought her rifle up on the parapet. Now she watched the rooftop to the left through the rifle scope.
She could see two men from the chest up, sitting just behind the parapet. They were frantically
looking around, trying to pin down exactly where the shooting was coming from. Catherine slowed her breathing and let her aim steady. One of them stood up with a pair of binoculars. Catherine squeezed off a round. The rifle barked and kicked back at her. The man fell sideways, hit in the left temple.
She quickly looked for the other spotter. He had disappeared. She kept the rifle scope trained on that spot for a few seconds, and suddenly she caught a double glare, right at the top of the parapet. Two lenses were reflecting the afternoon sun back at her. She sighted on the glare and squeezed off a second round. The light disappeared. Catherine watched for a few seconds more. She saw nothing.
Could still be keeping low. No. He’s dead. Move.
She turned to the second rooftop to the south. Through her scope she saw a head appear, she thought with binoculars, but only for a moment before it disappeared. She could see no sign of anyone else. Bad luck. The noise should have covered her shots, but a spotter must have been looking the right way to see one of the men in the north building go down. Now one or more men were searching for her.
Then a round hit the parapet four inches to the left of her gun, chipping the decorative cement cap, spraying her with fragments of concrete. She dropped below the edge and quickly moved to her right, scrambling on her hands and knees, keeping below the cover of the parapet.
Someone over there can shoot!
The corner of the roof was close. When she got to it she caught her breath and then brought her rifle up and over the wall in one quick move. As she swept the opposing roof with her scope a shot rang out and she heard the sharp, short whistle of a bullet going over her head. She ducked down. She was on the defensive. The other sniper had control of the field of fire, scanning and waiting for her to stick her head up. Only one shot at a time. Maybe it’s just one guy… She scrambled back to her left, keeping below the parapet. The other corner was a long way off. She kept crawling. Near the middle she stopped. She was panting, her body began to shake from the flush of adrenaline. Can’t shoot like this. But she needed to get the advantage back; not be on the defensive. Taking a deep breath, she swept the rifle smoothly up over the parapet and had just put her eye to the scope when the brick a foot below her exploded. Fragments of brick showered her face and forehead as the shot rang out. She dropped down just as another bullet whistled over, right where her head had been.
