Three seconds later, Brown sped forward twenty yards and locked the sling into the next firing position. He repeated the well-practiced maneuver with the DOC’s bus driver and his backup man. 2/3rds of the enemy dead in 11 seconds. Brown wasn’t pleased. It hadn’t taken him longer than 9 seconds in the dry runs. The gun smoke assaulted his senses and watered his eyes. Strange, because that had never happened before. He ignored it and focused on the tactical problem in front of him.
There were two possibilities he’d planned for. He couldn’t expect the lead vehicle to sit complacently and wait for death. They would either jump out and fight or speed away from the immediate kill zone and dismount under cover. Brown had a strategy to deal with each eventuality. When he saw the car spurt forward, but leave behind one shooting officer, he laughed. Of course the enemy didn’t get the memo about his plans. Oh well. “Adapt and overcome,” he muttered.
He dropped his head down and surged the truck forward. The on-foot policeman easily dodged the blind pickup. The cop emptied his magazine into the vulnerable driver’s side door during that brief moment as it swept past. Only five feet away. Impossible to miss.
Once past the angry cop, Brown downshifted and aimed for the U-turning squad car ahead. Stripping out most of the cabin’s interior and mounting that cheap steel backing behind the console and doors was a damn good last minute call. At the time, he thought he was becoming a Nervous Nelly in his old age. The “armor” wouldn’t stop a rifle, but it did the trick against these 9mm handgun rounds. Sometimes paranoia comes in handy.
He passed out of effective pistol range before the other officer reloaded. The cop ahead misread the situation and assumed this stranger was trying to escape. He stopped his turn and stayed in his vehicle to block the road. The lawman should be excused for that fatal error. His previous experience with armed men revolved around trying to catch them.
Total war was something new.
Brown rammed his “deer scraper” grill into the tire on the police car’s lightest end. The squad car made a screeching, bouncing, complete 360° turn. He had cut out the airbag in his truck before the fight, so nothing got in the way of yanking the quick release strap for the shotgun and redeploying it out the driver’s window. The sergeant major emptied his last four rounds through the barely conscious officer’s windshield and airbag. The cop slipped into the next world without a clue what caused it.
Brown calmly exchanged his shotgun for an AK-47 knockoff in the cab and dismounted. He absentmindedly put two in the chest and one in the head of the other State Trooper charging towards vengeance. Mopping up done, he massaged his aching ribs with one hand while scanning for new threats. All clear. He began to flash thumbs up to his men back on the bus, but then felt fear for the first time today.
Smoke poured out of the bus’s cabin. He dashed in as fast as he could to help. Nearly there, his nose dripped. Brown finally recognized the mild sting of tear gas. One of the guards must still be alive and was gassing his troops! He brought his rifle up to the high ready and prepared to finish the job he started.
Only a couple of yards from the door, a familiar grumbling behind him changed his plans. Without looking back to confirm, he veered left and slid to cover behind a brick sign for some manufacturing company. Just in time.
Less than two hundred yards past his wrecked truck four green Humvees raced his way. They must have seen him dive in here. Hell, he was the only moving thing around. The National Guard probably weren’t shooting because they couldn’t be a 100 % sure which side he was on. Time to remove any doubt.
The sergeant major took careful aim from the prone and popped the lead gunner in the neck. Don’t look for their reaction; react first! He sprang to his feet and dashed behind a semi-truck parked nearby. By the time the other three Humvee gunners responded and lit up the whole area Brown crouched 20 yards deeper in the parking lot. The long trailer didn’t provide much proper cover, but the concealment was enough, for now. He smashed a glass door from the locked building behind him and slipped inside.
Escaping from sight and direct danger gave him a chance to flank these National Guard fellas. The idea of one man taking on twenty was insane, but what else was he supposed to do? The shouts of his trapped brothers in the smoking bus steadied him. Brown faded deeper into the sprawling network of warehouses and shipping offices.
The armored Humvees halted within 50 yards of the stranded bus and fanned out. Gunners and drivers provided over watch against the lost sniper while the dismounts swept the area. The bus wasn’t a threat; those prisoners were all about to be released anyway. The only problem lay with this crazy vigilante.
The sergeant major’s half-conceived strategy was to overwhelm one of the Humvee’s and turn the machine gun on the others. Maybe it could have worked; maybe it was suicide. Either way, he never got an opportunity to find out. His stealthy approach on the farthest away truck wasn’t sneaky enough. The dismounted driver heard gravel crunching and spun around before Brown could plant his K-Bar into the terrified kid’s liver. He beat the surprised guy to the draw, at least, and put two messy rounds through the guardsman’s head first.
Had the truck’s gunner simply snatched his backup rifle he would have easily finished off the exposed and unprotected sergeant major. In the heat of the moment, he took the time to swivel the turret ring around, hoping to perforate this asshole with his M240 machine gun. Brown dashed forward and below that limited plane the machine gun’s spindle could depress. He shoved his rifle through the open driver’s door and into the standing gunner’s crotch. The man above scrambled to navigate the weird angle of shooting straight down with his M4 when this psychopath shot his nuts off.
Brown captured himself a Humvee and gun all right, but what a Pyrrhic victory. Before he could clamber into the turret the other guardsmen opened up on him. They knew full well both their compatriots were dead, and they weren’t about to let that go. Brown took cover behind the armored Humvee while hundreds of rounds gradually chewed it apart. He fired blindly around the fender from time to time, but more as a “screw you” than resistance.
It was a good 10-yard dash to cover. No doubt about it, he’d gotten himself thoroughly pinned. Like an amateur, he let his passion control his actions. Only a matter of time until they flanked him and taught him a final lesson. Hell, exposed as he was, they only had to move a few dozen yards to get a better firing angle. All his extra gear sat uselessly back in his pickup truck. He counted the rounds in his last magazine. Not much he could do about that now.
Brown half-sat on the steel bumper and wiped some blood from his face. His or someone else’s? Doesn’t matter. Stay focused. He gurgled piss warm water from the nipple of his Camelback, wishing he never quit smoking. The shooting around him picked up.
Suppressive fire. The enemy was on the move. Maybe he could see them coming and take one or two more with him. “Fuck it.” They say your status in hell is judged by the size of your entourage. He aimed to be a bigwig when he got there.
The whole time the sergeant major played Rambo, the smoke pouring out of the bus only increased. The tear gas canisters he accidentally triggered in the slaughter fest were part of that, but not all. The cloud was too dark. Those nonlethal devices created a fire in the cabin, as they so often do when used in confined quarters. Now, that small fire shouldn’t have been such a big deal. There wasn’t so much combustible material in there to begin with.