Glancing around, you notice several more armed and armoured men standing around an open manhole, pointing their automatic rifles down into it. You notice their safeties are off, and trigger fingers are ready. Had they even paid attention in their firearm safety courses?
Hudson is also wearing body armour, but he holds only a pistol in his hand, his automatic weapon slung over his shoulder. His body language screams caution, but directed at you personally rather than the situation.
The uniformed constables standing over the manhole are looking jumpy, their fingers hovering over the triggers, sweat dripping from their chins.
“Where are they?” you say to Hudson.
The chief inspector only gestures with his pistol toward the manhole, keeping his eyes trained on it for a moment as if wondering if he had seen something.
“Do they have any hostages?” you ask.
Hudson turns back to you and shakes his head. “No. We saw them go down about an hour ago, and nobody’s seen them come out. We’ve got a few men knee-deep in the muck down there, but they haven’t found anything yet.”
A gesture from Hudson directs your attention to a vintage utility van, probably of Second World War provenance, in good condition, abandoned and positioned in such a way as to partly block the road. It has no registration plates, and all its doors stand open. You look inside it and underneath, seeing nothing else suspicious.
A couple more manholes are visible from where you’re standing, their dark bowels reluctant to offer up the secrets they harbour. The cops standing over them are trying to get a look down below by probing with infrared cameras and microphones deep into the holes on long booms. They are doing a good job of penetrating the subterranean darkness with their high-tech gadgets, but without finding what they are looking for.
What you and they cannot see is a gutted brick and concrete hut not that far away from you. It is so decrepit that it could collapse at any moment. You also can’t see the torch lights flickering from the rough hole dug into the floor, nor hear the faint tap of boots on metal rungs. None of you can. The lights are moving about rapidly as they rise higher and nearer to the ground, until their owners turn them off. The sounds rise as well, and nobody is near enough to hear them.
As you are discussing the situation with Hudson, your briefing is rudely interrupted.
A woman runs from one of the nearby buildings. She shouldn’t be here—nobody should. She wears raggy clothes and tousled hair, with wild eyes and a nose once broken and unrepaired. Panic is visible on her face as she approaches you and Hudson.
“What’s going on?” she shrieks. “Why does everybody have guns?” Her eyes dart around, wide and inquiring, taking in the scene from her probably distorted and crazed perspective.
Speechless, all you can say is, “What the hell…,” and even that is an effort. You’re not interested in why she should happen to be here, in a condemned area, skulking around in buildings overdue for the wrecking ball, and under a police lockdown to boot. To your credit, you think only of her safety. Crazy squatter though she may be, you do have a duty of care.
“This place ain’t no shootin’ gallery! G’way! I ain’t done nothin’ wrong!” Even as she continues her excitable jabbering, you grab her by the wrist and force her to your car. She resists. “Watch where you’re puttin’ them hands!”
“Perhaps you’d prefer to stay in the open when the firing starts,” you say. “But you might get in the way of a bullet, and I’d get blamed.” Opening the back door, you shove the woman into the back seat with no thought for her personal comfort, and then you get in with her, making sure she doesn’t leave.
“Get your meat hooks off me! Leave me alone! Brute!” She struggles and squirms, but thankfully makes no attempt to exit the car.
Making eye contact with her, you gather the power of command in your voice. “Shut up!” You will the words into her eyes and brain. You need to be able to focus on the job you came to do.
As you take your Glock 17 pistol from its holster strapped to your thigh, she complies, bringing her knees up to her nose and wrapping her bony arms around her legs. You flick the magazine out of your weapon to check it while the woman looks all around with darting eyes, taking in the scene in the false safety of the car. Nerves showing with every breath and quiver, her eyes alight on your fully loaded ammunition clip, and this time she stares you down as a moment of understanding passes between you. Does she expect to survive? Does she know you will do what you can to protect her?
Examining the sidearm that you are rarely allowed to carry, you see that its clip is full, and you press it home into the grip with a heavy satisfying click. “Time to do some damage. You stay down,” you say.
And then you hear the distinctive crack of automatic weapon fire.
It has started.
Your instinct for self-preservation tells you to duck, but as the defender of the innocent you need to know what’s going on, so you guardedly bring your head up. You see one of your comrades-in-arms, a man you know as well as you know anybody on the force, fall to the ground, clutching his leg where a bullet has taken away a chunk of flesh. He is one of those men with whom you used to share beer and banter.
Looking away from your friend (if you could truly be said to have one) you see the dilapidated hut that you failed to notice previously. Three men sporting ski masks, more heavily armed than any of you, are emerging from the building, firing their weapons with extreme lack of prejudice. Each one carries a military grade automatic rifle, and pistols tucked into his belt. The ammunition bandoliers they wear are surely more of an affectation than of any practical use, except… The grenades attached to their clothing were of practical use—not army surplus toys, but modern tools of the trade any professional mercenary would be practiced with.
As the wounded officer writhes in agony on the ground, another constable runs to the rescue of his injured colleague, and takes a slug in his chest. The bullet passes straight through as if his flak jacket doesn’t exist. Armour piercing rounds such as those aren’t available to common criminals. But where these guys got their ammunition is not your problem right now. You would think the constable might be dead before he even falls across his injured friend but, no, he twitches and spasms before expiring, exhaling his last as the blood trickles down his chin.
You notice the crazy lady watching avidly through the rear window. “Get down!” you bark at the woman under your protection. You follow your own advice, pressing yourself down into the seat cushion, but she fails to act quickly enough. The report of gunfire deafens as a burst of bullets disintegrates your car’s windows, showering you with pellets of glass.
The woman droops across you, her head wounds bleeding profusely on your uniform. You could beat yourself up about the fact you were supposed to be taking care of her, but she should have done as she was told—never mind that she shouldn’t have been here to begin with.
Nevertheless, a shudder of horror tinged with regret goes through your spine, momentarily compromising your professionalism. Banishing the feeling, you push her off of you and prop her up against the opposite door. You are only trying to get her out of your way, not to give your enemies a target, but what else can you do? Gasping as the adrenaline grabs you, you raise your head to look out the window.
The gunmen are firing their weapons in the dark, not aiming very well. Their bullets impact everywhere, raining down chips of brick, shattering the remnants of already broken windows.
Maybe they don’t know you’re here. Maybe you have a chance. All your colleagues are out in the open.
You raise your gun.
You take aim, getting a good look at the ski masks, each of which sports a sewn-on badge over the forehead: Wolverines. Why does that seem familiar to you?
You fire.
Their ski masks provide no protection against a weapon such as your pistol. You would think they would wear helmets and body armour if they wanted to survive.
But if they wanted to survive, t
hey wouldn’t have started this rampage at all.
The perp in the centre drops, his brain severely impaired.
If they didn’t know about you before, they do now, even if you’ve ducked again to stay out of their sight. It was worth it. You brought one of them down. Only two left.
The indiscriminate hail of bullets continues, and you hear some of the hot lead thud into your car. If you survive this, the car won’t. Not that you care. It doesn’t belong to you.
Adrenaline pours forth, practically coming out of your pores. Your breathing comes heavy and fast now, as if you just ran a mile in record time and then continued on to a triathlon without stopping to collect your medal.
Taking a few deep breaths, and keeping your head down low, you look out the window again, surveying the scene. The thugs are a bit closer, but they’re taking their time as if there’s no pressure at all.
You raise your gun, but now you’re shaking too much to do anything with it. That’s the problem with adrenaline. Fight or flight isn’t good enough—you need to aim as well.
The remaining gunmen see you, and concentrate their fire in your direction making further mincemeat of the car. You squeeze yourself down as low as you possibly can as their bullets fly, trying to make yourself one with the seat cushion.
The door on your side is still open, and you chance a glance out. Your perspective through the car door is limited, but the ground seems littered with bodies. Either you’re hallucinating—you sincerely wish you were—or you didn’t know there were that many cops here backing you up. Hudson is taking cover behind a dilapidated wall, which fails to stop the bullets of the assassins. You see Hudson take a slug and go down. You wonder if he’s still alive.
Meanwhile, the gunmen are still advancing. They are too close to you for comfort. Something has to be done. You must act quickly. Shaking gun hand or not, you lean out the door and fire at them until your clip is empty. It makes no difference—you wasted your bullets, not one of which connected with its target, scarcely qualifying as covering fire.
You pull back into the relative safety of the car, still untouched by injury. You can’t help but be aware of the woman’s lifeless body—put her out of your mind. You sneak another look at Hudson who, prone on the ground and soaked in blood, is engaging in a firefight with the gunmen. The wall behind which he had been taking cover is now mostly on top of him. At least it offers some protection. You catch a glimpse of one of the terrorists—or whatever they are—turning himself away from you and toward the fallen Chief Inspector. Those bricks and blocks covering him won’t turn away very many bullets, nor last very long.
Your gun is empty. You need to fix that. You keep fresh magazines in one of the bulky compartments of your flak jacket. Still hunkering down out of the line of fire, your probing hand finds the clip, touching its cold metal.
But you can’t close your fingers on the vital ammunition—your hands won’t stay still. Fear and adrenaline has got them shaking as if the ambient temperature were below zero on this hot summer night. Concentrating, you succeed in grabbing the ammunition, and attempt to load your gun. The relentless shakes make it near-impossible.
Hurry! Come on… After a little eternity you get the clip fitted into your gun, and not a moment too soon. You are again ready for action, you hope.
You are lying on your back in the rear seat of the car, your head resting on the knees of the dead woman. At least she made herself useful for that much. Credit where it’s due.
Lifting up your head for another look at the progress of your enemies, you see the gunman’s hand holds a .44 magnum pistol, which will do terrible things to you if he gets a shot off. He’s practically on top of you.
You lie back on the bench seat, looking up at the shattered rear window of your car as the gunman’s hand probes into it, angling downward to point his weapon at you. You jam your foot into his wrist, crushing it against the beads of broken glass that still cling to the rim of the shattered window. Applying all the pressure you can, you hold him in place, dimly aware that he might at any moment bring up his other hand to spray you with automatic gunfire. Raising your head just enough to see his masked face, you give him everything you’ve got, emptying your gun into him point-blank while anchoring his hand with your foot. You continue pulling the trigger, only vaguely aware of the depleted clicking sound the weapon makes.
You release his wrist and he falls, thumping against the body of the car. There is no way this guy is getting up again.
Red encroaches at the edges of your vision. The world seems to be on a mad merry-go-round. Your chest is like a blast furnace. Fatigue grips you like a vacuum. You’re shaking seemingly beyond any kind of control.
It isn’t easy, but you release the gun from the iron grip of your hands and let it drop. The sound it makes as it hits the floor of your car is amplified twentyfold, as if you had not just endured the deafening sounds of impacts and close-quarters gunfire. Tumbling out onto your knees, you take in the full carnage as you get your feet under you and stand up. Your balance is shaky, and you sway like a graceless dancer.
Hudson must’ve taken down the last perp, even though you weren’t aware of it at the time. He always was a tough nut. Hudson looks like he’ll do okay with a little care and attention from a pretty nurse—probably just a broken rib or something—though he’s unconscious now.
The cop with the injured leg is still alive. You hope he’ll walk again.
A few other survivors can be heard coughing and grunting and groaning. You expected the body count to be high, but at a glance it looks like there are more survivors than casualties. As you steady yourself on your feet, you summon the paramedics and try to decide who to help first.
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