At the entrance to the subdivision was a crowd of about a dozen young men. They were walking into the Cedars, whooping and hollering. Waving their arms and yelling. Some had sticks, or something. A few had rifles. Hunting rifles or shotguns. They were right under the street light.
Dumbasses, Grant thought. Silhouetting yourselves in the street light. Grant was thinking clearly and was terrified at the same time. Instinct and training took over.
There was Ron’s car about 100 yards inside the subdivision. Grant couldn’t see him, but could see that his driver’s side door was open. Ron blasted the horn again and then came flying out the driver’s side with his shotgun. The punks started yelling, which was immediately followed by the sound of gunfire.
They were shooting at Ron. Actual shots! Grant couldn’t believe it.
Grant drove straight toward Ron’s car. He was more afraid of getting in a car wreck than he was of the shooting from the men. He felt a surge of confidence as he remembered Ted telling him that most bad guys are shitty shots. Grant punched the gas pedal and raced toward the gunfire.
Ron used his car door for cover and started firing into the air above their heads. Damn! That shotgun was loud. Lights started coming in on the surrounding houses. Ron shot five or six rounds at them. Grant wasn’t sure how many; he was concentrating on getting in between Ron and the crowd with his car. Ron would need to reload soon, and that took a while with a shotgun. Probably too long for Ron.
When Ron stopped shooting to reload, the pack of men started to run toward Ron. They were about seventy yards from his car, still silhouetted by the street lights.
Grant’s foot was all the way down on the gas pedal. He was driving straight into the crowd. He didn’t really have a plan. He just kept thinking he needed to get between the crowd and Ron.
Grant flew past Ron and slammed on the brakes. He was about to plow into the crowd of men. He skidded and stopped about ten yards in front of Ron’s car. Grant prayed that Ron didn’t shoot him as he zoomed in front Ron, who had reloaded and was blazing away with a shotgun. The hours of training with the Team made it so that Grant wasn’t bothered by the shooting happening all around him.
Grant could see and hear the crowd as it approached his car. They were about twenty-five yards away. Grant opened his door, jumped out of the driver’s side, got behind the door, smoothly drew his pistol, and got in the kneeling position, using the car door for cover. The closest people in the crowd were now about ten yards away. Grant could see their faces. They were running full speed at him. So many of them. To Grant, they were just like a bunch of steel targets when he was at the range with the Team. Just pick one and then another and keep going. No big deal.
Grant put his front sight on the closest bad guy. The glow-in-the-dark three-dot sights told him exactly where the shot would go and the street light lit up the target, who was right on him. Grant got a good grip and pressed the trigger. He felt the recoil but didn’t really hear the shot. The guy was hit, but kept coming. Grant put a quick second one in him; right in his chest. The bad guy stopped cold right in front of him, but his forward momentum kept him flying toward Grant. The others in the crowd were further behind the first guy, but close and getting closer.
Grant flashed back to his training with the Team. Shooting at those human-shaped steel targets was paying off. The men were moving, but they were just targets to hit. Grant shot them one right after another. Efficiently. It didn’t feel like shooting a person; it felt like shooting steel target. After he hit a few of the targets, they quit charging him and started to turn around.
He felt someone come up behind him, and swung around, prepared to shoot whoever was attacking him from behind. It was Ron. Grant turned back around toward the crowd, and realized he had used the cover of his car door for quite a few shots so it was time to find new cover. He looked around for any close-in threats. He looked behind him and Ron. He remembered Ted telling him that bad guys have a tendency to be where you least expect them, so search and assess after you shoot. Constantly look for threats.
There weren’t any. By this time, Ron was up against Grant’s car door for cover. Ron didn’t have his shotgun, but he had his pistol in his hand.
“Stay here!” Grant yelled. Then he yelled, “Moving!” like he had with the Team. Ron looked at him funny. Grant suddenly remembered that Ron didn’t know those commands. Ron looked at Grant as if to say, “OK, move if you want.”
Grant ran to the rear of the car, around the back from the driver’s side to the passenger side, and—now he was scared—popped up and fired toward the crowd. He didn’t have a target; he was just shooting to keep their heads down.
There was no one there. They seemed to be gone. Grant fired fast until his pistol magazine was empty. Without even thinking, he yelled “check” ejected the magazine, and slammed in a new one. He racked his pistol and started scanning the area for additional bad guys, but he didn’t see any.
“Get in the car and let’s go!” Grant yelled to Ron. Ron got in the driver’s seat and threw the car into reverse once Grant was in the passenger seat.
Ron had moved Grant’s AR out of the passenger seat so Grant wouldn’t smash into it. They backed out of the area quickly; Ron tried not to hit his own car in the process.
Ron quickly backed the car into the intersection of two streets about 150 yards from the entrance and turned around so he was now driving forward. He was driving toward his house when Grant said, “We have to go back to make sure they don’t come back.” Ron abruptly turned the car around, and they flew back to Ron’s car stopped in the middle of the street. They stopped and jumped out of Grant’s car. Grant saw his AR in the back seat. He grabbed it and used the roof of his car as a rest to aim the rifle, which was pointed toward the entrance to the subdivision. Grant wondered why he hadn’t used his rifle in the first place. Why had he engaged targets with this pistol instead of his rifle, which would have been better? Because this is my first gunfight, Grant thought to himself.
A car came flying down the street from their left, and Grant swung around. That red dot and circle of his rifle sight was perfectly clear. He aimed at the driver and clicked off the safety.
It was Len’s car. Grant went back to pointing his AR at the entrance toward where the men had been. Grant was more afraid of Len hitting him with his car than getting shot.
He was fully alive right now. Every sense—hearing, sight, touch, even smell—was on overdrive. He felt like Superman. Not that he was enjoying this; he just felt invincible.
There were no bad guys around and Grant had Ron and Len covering him. He started to relax. Then he remembered a story Ted told him about guys getting shot when they relaxed after what seemed to be the end of a gunfight. God, Grant was thinking so clearly. He couldn’t believe it.
Once Grant knew where Ron and Len were, and that they had cover, Grant started scanning 360 degrees with his AR. He didn’t want some piece of shit to run up behind him or to his side. He was determined not to get jumped. That would be embarrassing. I could never face the Team if I got jumped instead of searching and assessing like I knew I should be doing, he thought.
Grant started moving to various cover points on his car and then Len’s as he made his sweeps. He was in a zone. He was acting out the training, only this was for real.
Grant saw some things in the street ahead of him. He couldn’t tell what they were. There were about five of them, and some of them were moving. He didn’t know what they were, but they weren’t trying to hurt him.
Ron and Len were talking to him, but Grant couldn’t hear them. His ears were ringing, and his hands were starting to hurt from gripping the AR so tightly.