“Fed?” Mike asked, genuinely confused. “Wait, you think I’m with the Army?”
The leader—who I dubbed Henry because of his lever-action rifle—started to say something else, but a shout from where I had last seen Sophia interrupted him. “Hey, I got another one!”
Henry grinned viciously, staring Mike in the eye. “Is that a fact?”
I felt cold, like someone had dumped ice water over my head. Shifting my aim, I saw a man nearly as big as Mike emerge from the side of the shed, one brawny arm around Sophia’s neck, the other holding a revolver to her head. She had a gag in her mouth, hands bound behind her back, one eye swollen nearly shut.
The sight shocked me into stillness. A grinding sound grated in my ears, and for a few seconds, I wondered what it was. Then I realized it was my own teeth.
I knew there wasn’t much time. Now that they had Sophia, there was no reason to keep Mike alive. My only hope was they would be less anxious to kill Sophia, for obvious reasons.
Henry, the leader, was the biggest threat. The others clearly deferred to him, so taking him out first would cause the most confusion. At least I hoped it would.
Steadying myself, I put the reticle just under Henry’s right arm, centered it on his ribcage, let out half a breath, and squeezed the trigger three times. The only sounds were a series of muted cracks, the clank of the chamber opening and closing, and three low thumps as the 5.56 rounds went straight through Henry and kicked up little puffs of dust a few feet to his left. He stiffened in shock and tried to scream, but all that came out was a high, strangled whine and a spray of blood.
The other two gunmen looked to their leader in confusion. One of them said, “Hey, you all right?”
Mike made his move.
One second he was standing with both hands in the air, the next his right arm was outstretched, pistol in hand. The gun barked twice. Without waiting to see what effect it had, Mike dove forward with surprising speed, rolled, and came one knee with his gun leveled. The two of us fired on the third man at the same time, Mike aiming at his chest, me aiming at his head. The poor bastard died with an almost comical look of surprise on his face. He did not even have a chance to shift his shotgun in Mike’s direction.
As Mike turned to cover the first man he had shot, I shifted my aim to the man holding Sophia. His mouth was a wide circle of shock, eyes bulging from his head. Mike’s gun rang out one more time, and in my peripheral vision, I saw the second gunman’s head snap back. He turned to his right and fired his last round at Henry, also snapping his head back.
Not wasting any time, Mike dropped the .380 and snatched up his rifle, then sprinted to the back of the truck. Crouching behind one of the axles, he sighted in on the man holding Sophia.
“Let her go,” he shouted, “and I’ll let you walk out of here.”
“Fuck you!” the man yelled back, pressing his revolver harder into Sophia’s temple. “Drop that gun or I’ll blow her fucking brains out.”
“You do that and I’ll kill you where you stand.”
I keyed my radio. “Mike, do what he says, but stay behind the truck. Ease to your left slowly, try to get him to point the gun away from Sophia. Don’t worry, I’ve got a clean shot.”
Mike nodded once, not looking over his shoulder. The last gunman shouted, “Do it now, fucker, or the bitch dies.”
“Okay, okay. Just don’t shoot, all right?” Mike made a show of holding up his rifle, switching it to safe, and tossing it aside. “I’m coming out now. Just don’t shoot.”
He was wasting his breath. Hostage situations are not like they make them out to be in the movies. If someone has a human shield, even an expert marksman would be hard pressed to shoot them without running a serious risk of hitting the hostage. Which is why, in real life, cops almost never try it. Furthermore, if you step out of cover to confront a hostage-taker, you are at the disadvantage of having to aim carefully. The other guy has no such problem. All he has to do is point the gun at you and fire until you go down. And it’s not like television where the bad guy just shoots one time. In real life, they spray bullets at you rapid fire, figuring at least one of them will hit you.
Consequently, Mike stayed behind cover as he stood up and raised his hands. “Okay, I’m coming out.”
He had taken no more than four steps toward the end of the truck’s bare chassis before the gunman pointed his revolver. Mike must have been watching the man’s shoulder because as soon as he twitched, Mike hit the ground.
My first shot hit him in the shoulder, the same one attached to the arm holding the gun. He cried out and fired wildly, the bullet bashing through the wall of the barn beneath me. By its report it was powerful, maybe a .357.
Sophia, clever girl, used the distraction to snap her head savagely backward into the gunman’s nose. From where I stood near the window, it sounded like someone hitting a melon with brick. The gunman cried out in pain, loosening his grip enough for Sophia to fall down and roll away.
I fired seven more times.
The first six riddled the man’s torso, causing him to drop his weapon so he could clutch at his ruined insides. He stumbled backward and fell, a ragged scream escaping his lips.
Once again, I thought of the difference between movies and reality. In the movies, when the hero shoots the bad guy, he jerks to the side and falls down dead. In reality, people rarely die instantly from gunshot wounds. Even with a direct shot to the heart, it takes a few seconds to lose consciousness. During that time, the victim is awake and relatively alert, and can feel the pain of the wound.
I had deliberately missed his heart.
He lay on his side, feet kicking uselessly, mewling, mouth stretched in agony. I watched him suffer for a few seconds, jaw set, a cold flower of hate blooming in my chest. I knew I should feel sorry for him—that would have been the human thing to do—but at the moment, I felt nothing. Just a grim, distant satisfaction he was no longer a threat.
“Caleb,” Mike shouted, looking at me through the window. “What are you waiting for? Finish him off.”
I didn’t want to. I wanted to stand there and listen to him scream, to hear the terror in his voice, to watch the blood pour out, to see the look on his face when the cold grip of oblivion closed around him and squeezed. After what he had done to Sophia, and what he would have done if I hadn’t stopped him, he deserved no better.
“Caleb!”
“All right!”
With my seventh shot, I put him out of his misery.
FORTY-SIX
A search of the semi found the tanks empty, so after dragging the marauders’ dead bodies out of sight, we scoured the rest of the property. The four-car garage attached to the mansion yielded diesel pickup with a full tank, which I assumed belonged to our attackers. Mike volunteered to siphon the fuel and asked me to go check on Sophia.
I found her standing on the metal steps attached to the passenger’s side of the semi, staring at her reflection in the mirror, fingers gently probing her swollen eye. “Those assholes leave us any fuel?”
“Yeah, they did.”
She stepped down and came to me, arms slipping around my waist. I held her gently, careful not to touch her face. “I can’t believe I let that son of a bitch get the drop on me,” she said.
“How did it happen?”
“I turned to look for Dad, just for a few seconds. Next thing I know my rifle is on the ground, there’s an arm around my throat, and everything went black. I woke up while he was tying my hands and tried to scream, but he hit me. That’s all I remember until I saw you shoot from the barn.”
“You remember head-butting the fucker?”
“Yeah. I remember that part. But it shouldn’t have come to that, Caleb. If I had kept my eyes on the house like you told me to, I would have seen him coming.”
Her voice began to break as she spoke, so I held her tighter and kissed the top of her head. “It’s okay now, Sophia. They’re all dead. They won’t be hurting anyone ever again.”