Beginning of the End

I stopped trying to count after around 30 rounds fired without a break long enough to account for a magazine change. Either there were two of them, taking turns, or one guy with one heavy machine gun. The car I was hiding behind only swayed mildly with each hit, so it couldn't have been anything too big.

Rubino was ducked behind a car roughly ten feet from me, covering his head with one hand and holding his cell phone up to his face with the other. Whatever he was yelling was lost to me underneath the barrage of gunfire, but I doubted he was ordering Chinese. Behind the police car, Bremer was occasionally poking his head up long enough to fire a few rounds from his sidearm at whatever was firing rounds at us.

The volley of shooting stopped for a minute, then began again, this time peppering the police cruiser with new holes. I took the opportunity to get up and look through the battered windshield of the car I was behind to find the source of the shooting. Across the parking lot, about a hundred feet away, was a white panel van parked sideways across three parking spaces. The van had a sliding door on the side, through which I could see somebody laying flat on the floor of the van and positioned behind some kind of automatic weapon with a bi-pod . I couldn't see a driver or anybody else around the van, so I guessed it was some kind of one-man mobile turret system he had going on. I couldn't see him, but somehow I knew it was the Irishman. This was a stupid, foolhardy way to stage an attack and reeked of inexperience or thoughtlessness. Right up his alley.

The gunman saw me and turned the fire once again to the sad little heap I was hiding behind. I ducked, felt the shower of more glass scattering over my head, watched a few more rounds hit the brick wall in front of me, adding to the random pattern of holes.

If I moved to either side of the car I'd be completely exposed, same story with Bremer. It looked like Rubino had a whole row of cars without any gaps. If he stayed low and was quick enough he could probably make it all the way to the street, if that would accomplish anything. He was still on the phone, though.

When he glanced over at me, I made a cowboys-and-Indians handgun gesture with both hands to indicate that I needed a weapon. I thought maybe FBI Special Agents carried two. Rubino recognized and lowered the phone for a second, then yelled, "Where's yours?"
I pointed up at the building, two silver Berettas up in my room, then over at the other side of the parking lot, one USP in my car. I shrugged.

Rubino gestured over toward their car, the black Chrysler sedan parked in the middle row of cars, between this row and the shooter, then yelled, "MP5 in the trunk!"

The Heckler & Koch MP5 was a compact, automatic sub-machine gun and the star of most every counter-terrorist video game I'd ever played. It might help even the odds, and the cool points from having fired one wouldn't hurt either. I took a quick peek around the side of my car-shield and saw the sedan; the trunk was facing our direction. With some luck and quick legs, it might be possible; but not for me. I was pinned down.

"Keys?" I asked Rubino over the gunfire, which almost seemed random now.
He shook his head, then pointed at Bremer. I turned around, got Bremer's attention, and asked the same question. He reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a shiny set of keys, then threw them straight-armed in my direction.

There was another burst of gunfire in my direction, forcing me to take cover and miss the keys. They passed me and landed on the sidewalk between me and Rubino, right in the gap between our cars. Rubino looked at the keys then up at me with an oh-what-next stare. I frowned and shrugged an apology.

Bremer seemed to have another idea. The unmoving, probably-dead cop laying on the ground beside the police cruiser was out of Bremer's reach, but he'd have a gun on him. If Bremer could get to the cop, get his gun, and get it to me, the three of us could rotate firing, drawing the shooter's focus away from the rest so the other two could take him down. He got this message across with some pointing and gestures.

I thought it was interesting how they'd both dropped the protect-the-kid attitude that one might expect in such a situation, but they probably both knew that I might be better at this then either of them. This was a bit disturbing.

Bremer pointed at Rubino and yelled for cover fire, for Rubino to fire at the shooter as a distraction so Bremer could reach out and pull the cop in toward him. Rubino nodded, Bremer set his gun down on the sidewalk behind him, then Rubino took a few blind shots over the top of his car-shield, then moved to the other side of the car and shot some more. In a matter of seconds the heavy fire from across the parking lot returned, cascading around Rubino and the car. Bremer saw this and lunged out beyond the safety of the police cruiser and grasped wildly at the police officer's belt. The automatic fire stopped. Bremer got a hold of the belt and heaved himself backwards, moving the cop's body a few inches. Bremer leaned out to prepare another heave, but a line of gunfire cut through the pavement between me and Bremer, cut through the officer's body, and cut through Bremer before he could pull the body toward him. Two pink explosions tore through the top and bottom of Bremer's torso, and he collapsed backwards onto the curb where the sidewalk met the parking lot.

My eyes wide, locked on Bremer; my mouth unmoving. Bremer lifted one arm slowly to his chest, then the arm fell.

Rubino took a few more shots around the side of the car then came back for cover. He looked around to see if it had worked, looked past me and over at Bremer. Horror and disbelief spread across his face. He called Bremer's name, Bremer didn't move.

Rubino looked down at the car keys sitting in veritable no-man's-land. He stared at them, fixated on them. He was going to do something stupid.

"Don't!" I yelled.
Rubino looked up at me slowly, broken. He started to say something, then his eyes cut suddenly past me. I turned around and looked over at Bremer. His arm was moving again, outstretched and feeling across the surface of the sidewalk around him like someone who'd lost their glasses. His fingers touched the edge of his handgun just beside him, and he stopped searching. He dragged the pistol in toward him enough so he could wrap his fingers around him, then he seemed to tense up his arm like a cobra preparing to strike. Bremer rolled his head just enough to see me out of the bottom of his eyes, then sprung his arm forward, sliding the pistol across the sidewalk. The metal scraped against the cement and the gun made a little hop as it hit the seam between two segments, and then ran out of momentum and came to a stop just three feet from me, beyond the cover of the car. Bremer didn't move after that.

Rubino looked at the gun, at me, at the keys, then back at me. "If we break for it in two directions," he said, "he can't target both of us!"
I knew what he wanted to do, and I wanted to stop him, but he was set. If he ran for the keys and I did nothing, Rubino would be dead. If he got the keys and switched directions, and I went for the gun, the shooter would have to choose which of us to aim for. That hesitation might be long enough for one of us to do something useful. The bigger risk was on Rubino, though. He'd be exposed for much longer. But if he moved, I'd be forced to move as well, or else I'd be killing him.

"No!" I said, but it was useless. He looked up with fire in his eyes and yelled, "Go!" and he started moving. He got in a sort of sprinter's stance and lunged from his cover toward me, grabbing the keys. I had to move. I had to.

I scrambled to my feet and ran out away from my cover and toward Bremer and his gun. I had the gun in just over a second, a black boxy Glock , and kept moving in the same direction. In my periphery I could see Rubino pop his car's trunk with the remote and head toward it, in the open. If I took cover, the shooter would go for the open target and nail Rubino, so I couldn't take cover; I just kept running, hoping that I was the priority target.

I stuck to the sidewalk and ran past Bremer and the cop, and was just passed the police cruiser when the shooting started. The police cruiser erupted in familiar destruction, then the next car as I passed it, then the brick wall just behind me as I sprinted. He was trailing me with a flurry of gunfire that hit the sidewalk, wall, and cars before my own shadow. He should have been leading me. If he knew what he was doing, I'd be dead.

When I reached the end of the sidewalk and the end of the hotel's front side I was out of the shooter's limited field of view. Firing through the open door of that van, he could only really see the hotel's front entrance and not much beyond it. I stopped for a moment to look around, saw Rubino ducked and running toward the open trunk of his sedan, bullets now flying just over his head.

I ejected the magazine from Bremer's gun and was slightly disappointed to find there was only one round in it, plus one in the chamber. Two shots, not quite enough for what I had in mind. Trying to think of an alternative, I made a bee-line toward the white panel van, staying out of sight from the opened door. Rubino was at the trunk of his car and seemed to have his head buried inside of it. He pulled out a black metal case and dropped to the ground, started opening it. The shooter was spraying bullets wildly around the sedan. When I was about twenty feet from the van I raised the Glock and fired a single shot through the right-rear tire. With a single gust of air the tire deflated and the van's rear corner sunk about four inches, and the shooting stopped. Rubino had the case open and was pulling the MP5 from its holder and freeing a long, banana-shaped clip of ammo. The shooting continued from inside the van, I kept running.

I could see the muzzle of the gun sticking a few inches out of the open door as I approached it from the rear now. When I was close enough, I kicked the side of the sliding door forward, rolling it on its rails and sliding it shut, knocking the tip of the gun to the left before the door latched clicked secure. Just as the door slid shut, a quick pattern of bullet holes appeared from the outside of the door just a few feet from my face. I turned and saw Rubino standing now, looking up from the rail of his raised MP5 and looking hopeful.

Inside the van I heard a quick series of thuds and saw the rear doors swing open, the shooter quickly climb out and point a handgun around the side of the vehicle at me. Rubino fired another string of shots, this time across the back side of the van, and the shooter ducked back around the other side of the van. In the moment I saw him, he looked to have a close buzz-cut, wearing a tight black t-shirt and urban camo pants. Rubino started walking, gun raised, toward the van. I leveled the Glock and turned sharply around the front of the van just as the shooter slid around again to the back, then I heard him jump inside the van through the open rear doors. Me on the left and Rubino on the right, we had him boxed in and he probably knew it. He'd probably want to have some kind of last stand with that full-auto of his, so I approached the rear slowly, minding the fact that I was only good for one shot.

The van's engine turned, suddenly, and the front wheels spun for a second and the van lurched forward. Why didn't I see that coming? I stepped around to the back of the van and looked through the open doors, saw a familiar-looking assault rifle discarded on the van's floor along with about ten drum magazines for it scattered across the floor, bare but for a single black foam mat rolled out where the shooter had been laying prone-sideways. There were two bucket seats in the front, and just as the van really started to move I caught the shooter's eye in the rear-view mirror. He turned quickly and fired three rounds out the back with his left hand, missing me as I jumped clear of the open doors to the right of the van. Rubino had stopped moving and opened fire, sending dozens of shots through the side window and across the side of the moving van before it picked up speed and approached the street.

The rear doors swung in both directions as the van sped off, Rubino pointlessly chasing it.

I just kept my eyes on the driver's seat, through the rear. I raised the Glock with my right arm completely outstretched, used counter-pressure from my left arm to steady it, and kept my eye on that driver's seat, waiting for the doors to swing open. When the van reached the parking lot's exit, I thought of nothing but that driver's seat, held by breath, and pulled the trigger.

About a hundred and fifty feet away, the van kept moving. It moved through the parking lot exit, onto the street, then straight into the front end of a car, and then stopped in the middle of the street. The rest of the street traffic stopped suddenly around the wreck.

Rubino ran, I ran. In a few seconds we were out of the parking lot and on the street. We both slowed as we neared the unmoving van, the people who had gotten out of their cars suddenly got back in when they saw Rubino's sub-machine gun and my empty Glock . Rubino saw the slide locked back on the gun in my hand and stopped to reach into his holster to pull out a loaded magazine and handed it to me. I took it, dropped the empty, slid the fresh mag into the Glock , and dropped the slide lock, all like second nature. He nodded me and we approached the van again, he around the driver's side and me around the side. I noticed that the left rear door was closed, and there was a single bullet hole in its blacked-out glass window. The right side of the van was covered in bullet dents and holes, the right rear tire was shredded from running flat on the wheel. The windshield and side window were smashed to oblivion, and the door handle was so shot-up it wouldn't work.

When I got up to the side window I looked through to see Rubino on the other side, looking down at the shooter. He was in the driver's seat, leaning forward, his face pressed sideways into the steering wheel, surrounded by a pillow of mostly-deflated airbag. There was a fresh hole in the bucket seat, just below the headrest. The shooter had a matching hole in his neck, just below the head. Through the windows, Rubino looked at me with a blank expression. I wasn't exactly sure how to feel, either.