Under any other circumstance, Graham would have launched to the stratosphere if anyone had spoken to him like that — especially if that someone was Jolaine. As it was, he knew he’d screwed up, and now he’d agree to anything. “We’re clear,” he said.
“All right,” Jolaine said. “Let’s do this.” She moved him to the side of the door, but kept one hand on his shoulder. She drew her pistol with her other hand. “When I tell you to open the door, I want you to open it all the way. Just leave it open, and we’ll head to the car.”
Graham pointed to the shopping bags. “What about our stuff?”
“I’ll buy you another goddamn toothbrush, okay?”
It was a stupid question.
She nodded. Just once, a single twitch of her head. “Open the door.”
Just as she’d told him, he pulled on the door, but it stuck. After three tries, it pulled away from the jamb and opened all the way. The door hadn’t even stopped moving before Jolaine was pushing him out the door and into the parking lot.
He heard the SUVs turning the corner into the lot before he saw them. There were two of them and they screamed past the little front office building where the clerk had decided that Jolaine was a pedophile and headed right for them, moving fast enough that Graham didn’t think they’d be able to stop before ramming them.
Graham didn’t have a chance to react before Jolaine bent him at the waist and pushed him to the far side of the vehicle — the passenger side. Just seconds into this, and already they were breaking the rules.
The SUVs screeched to a halt and the doors flew open. The first man Graham saw was the driver of the first vehicle. He stepped out with a rifle in his hands and even before his feet hit the ground, Jolaine fired her pistol twice. Blood flew from the guy’s forehead and he dropped in a heap.
“Get in the car!” Jolaine commanded, opening the door for him. She fired twice more, but he couldn’t see the result.
The world erupted in more gunfire. Bullets tore into their Mercedes, launching puffs of glass, and making the entire chassis vibrate with the individual impacts. Graham cowered on the ground as Jolaine returned fire.
“Where’s your machine gun?” he yelled.
“In the trunk!” She fired again. Again, again, and again.
Graham rose to his knees to peer through the shattered windows to see what was going on. What he saw both surprised and terrified him. Three men lay on the ground near the first vehicle. Two of them lay still, and the third was writhing on the pavement, screaming for help. Others hid behind open doors, firing blindly, exposing only their rifles. Their bullets raked the front of the motel and probably the sky, but precious few impacted the car.
Jolaine, on the other hand, stood tall, allowing the body of the car to serve as a shield as she fired two-and three-shot combinations at the attackers. Graham was watching when the slide on the top of her pistol locked open.
Oh, shit, she’s out of bullets.
Not yet, she wasn’t. With her eyes never leaving the people she was shooting at, she dropped the clip — he thought that’s what it was called — out of the bottom of her gun, and then she produced another one from somewhere under her shirt and slapped it into place. She started firing again.
“How many more of those do you have?” he asked.
She didn’t answer, and he interpreted the silence as the worst kind of news. He didn’t know how many bullets she had left, but it didn’t take a genius to know that once they were gone, both he and Jolaine would be dead unless she somehow killed them all first.
“I’m getting the machine gun,” he said.
“The hell you are!”
“The hell I’m not!” Graham was tired of hiding, and he was tired of being a victim. Like before, when all this shooting shit was just a thought in his head, he was not going to die hiding. Only cowards died hiding. His dad died shooting, and his mom, if she had in fact been killed, died shooting. He was going to be part of the family tradition.
Graham dropped back down onto the ground to get behind the steel, and he moved to the rear door.
“Graham!” Jolaine yelled.
“I’m getting in the friggin’ car!” he yelled. “What do you want from me?”
He pulled the door open and slid like a snake along the floor. He lost a flip-flop in the process, but he’d worry about that later. Or, he wouldn’t. Right now, it didn’t matter. His legs were still hanging out the door when he reached up and pulled down the armrest in the middle of the backseat. He was working a hunch, and it proved to be correct. There was a hatch behind the armrest that opened up to the trunk. If some asshole hadn’t locked it—
He pulled and it opened.
Yes!
There weren’t many advantages to being short and skinny when you’re fourteen years old — in fact, before today, he wouldn’t have been able to name one — but it turned out that being able to slither into a tiny space to retrieve a machine gun was one of them.
He entered like Superman, his arms outstretched over his head, and when his shoulders were clear, he started feeling around. This space defined darkness. But for the tiny streams of light that penetrated through the bullet holes, the blackness would have been perfect, absolute. That dim light, however, provided only shadows, no definition. As the world continued to explode outside, his hands found what he thought might have been a lug wrench, and also something that felt squishy that he didn’t like touching at all.
There it was! His hand landed on the tip of the barrel first — the muzzle and the sight — and he grabbed it. As he backed out of the hole, it occurred to him that the muzzle was pointed directly at his forehead — his Scout Camp counselor had pounded them on the importance of never allowing a gun to point at anything you weren’t willing to destroy — but now was not the time.
His shoulder cleared the hole, and two seconds later, he had the rifle in his hands.
He tumbled back out onto the parking lot just as Jolaine’s gun locked open again. She looked at it with anger, as if it had betrayed her.
“Jolaine!” he yelled.
Her eyes darted first to him, and then to the rifle he held. She smiled and ducked below the level of the fender just long enough to grab the carbine. “Good for you,” she said, and she rumpled his hair. “Now go back in there and get the rest of the ammunition. I’ve got a bunch of extra magazines in pouches. Hurry!”
Graham was a total shit for not obeying her orders, but when this was over, she was going to have to give him a hug. Jolaine didn’t know what she’d been thinking when she locked her only decent weapon into the trunk of her car, but as the Glock ejected her last shell casing, the appearance of the M4 felt like a gift from God — like a sign that they were destined to survive this round.
Whoever their attackers were, they were not experienced warriors. They fought as if they were afraid of being shot. Of course, everyone in a firefight was afraid of getting shot, but those who were experienced understood that the best way to avoid catching a bullet was to aim your shots and make sure they counted. As a mentor of hers had once said, the secret is to shoot first, shoot fast, and shoot well. As an added bonus, it never hurt to shoot dirty, too.