Countdown: A Joe Ledger Prequel Short Story to Patient Zero

guy who’d just shot one of mine and I took him off at the knees with two rounds from the shotgun. Take this message home: don’t shoot at cops.

I spun out of the way of some return fire and ducked behind the big blue case. I fired the Remington dry and then dropped it so I could pull my Glock. I know the.40 is standard but I’ve always found the.45 to be more persuasive.

A bad guy rose up behind a stack of file boxes and pointed a SIG Sauer at me in a very professional two- handed grip. I gave him a double-tap — one to the sternum to make him stand at attention and the next round through the brain pan.

After that it was duck, scream, shoot, reload. Everyone doing the same damn dance. Jerry Spencer was near me and we covered each other during reloads.

The report says I dropped four hostiles in that initial fire fight. One of them was the thirteenth man.

Yeah, I know I said that there were eight of them and four of us, but during the firefight I caught movement to my immediate right and saw the door to the big blue case hanging loose, its lock ripped up by gunfire. The door swung open and a man staggered out. He wasn’t armed so I didn’t fire on him; instead I concentrated on the guy behind him who was tearing up the room with a QBZ-95 Chinese assault rifle, something I’d only ever seen in magazines. Why he had it and where the hell he found ammunition for it I never did find out, but those rounds punched a line of holes right through Jerry’s shield, and he went down.

“Son of a bitch!” I yelled and put two in the shooter’s chest.

Then this other guy, the thirteenth guy, comes crashing right into me. He was pale and sweaty, stank like raw sewage, and had a glazed bug-eyed stare. I thought, drug addict. He wasn’t armed, so I gave him a flat kick in the upper leg to drive him off. That usually takes a man down with a knot of screaming cramps in the dense meat of the thigh, but all it did to him was knock him against the edge of the conference table. He rebounded and lunged at one of my guys — a tough little monkey named McGoran — and I swear to God the dope fiend tried to bite him. McGoran butt-stroked him with his rifle stock and the pale guy went down.

I turned to offer cover fire while McGoran dragged Jerry to cover, but I caught movement to my left and there he was again: the fruitcake with the bug eyes. He snarled at me, his lips peeling back from green and grimy teeth. I don’t know what kind of drugs this guy was taking, but he was having a really freaky high.

I stepped back to avoid his lunge, but my back slammed hard into a file cabinet and the sweaty guy clamped his teeth on the forearm I put up to ward him off. He tried to tear a chunk out, but he had a mouthful of sleeve and Kevlar. All I could feel was a bad pinch, and in the madness of the moment part of my mind lingered to marvel at how determined he was to chow down on my arm.

“Get off!” I screamed and gave him an overhand left that should have dropped him, but only shook him loose. He dropped to a crouch and scuttled away like a cockroach, pushing past me to make for the back door. The firefight was still hot so I couldn’t give chase even though I figured he was making for that sweet Cigarette outside — Jerry’s boat — so I leaned out into the hall and parked two in his back, quick and easy. He hit the deck and skidded five feet before he stopped, then he simply sagged against the floor and stopped moving. I spun back into the room and now McGoran provided cover fire so I could pull Jerry behind the table.

A second team crowded into the room and now we had the numbers to turn the place into a shooting gallery.

I heard gunfire coming from a different part of the warehouse so I peeled off from the pack to see what was happening and immediately spotted a trio of hostiles in a nice shooting-blind laying down a lot of fire at one of the other teams. The team under fire had a wooden crate for cover and the automatic fire was chopping it to kindling. The hostiles knew their business, too: they fired in sequence so that there was always a continuous barrage while the others reloaded.

Screw this, I thought as I raced forward.

I ran as fast as silence would allow, well out of their line of sight. I had my pistol out, but to open fire from that distance would have been suicide. I might get one or two but the other would turn and chop me up. There was no cover at all between me and the hostiles, but I hugged the wall, running on cat feet, making no noise that could have been heard above the din of the gunfire.

When I was ten feet out I opened fire. My first shot caught one of the hostiles in the back of the neck, and the impact slammed him into the crates. As the other two turned I closed to zero distance and fired one more shot which hurled the second hostile backward, but then the slide on my gun locked open. There was no time to change magazines. The third shooter instantly lunged at me, swinging his rifle barrel to bear. I parried it one-handed with my gun arm, and while I was still in full stride I used the empty pistol to check the swing of his rifle while simultaneously jabbing forward with my left hand, fingers folded in half and stiffened so that the secondary line of knuckles drove into the attacker’s windpipe. A Leopard Paw punch, nasty but useful. As this was happening I made a quick change midstep so that my left foot went from a regular running step into a longer lunge and the tip of my combat boot crunched into the cartilage under the hostile’s kneecap. Immediately I brought my gun hand up and jabbed the exposed barrel of the pistol into the hostile’s left eye socket.

The attacker flew backward as if he’d been hit by a shotgun blast.

As I completed my step I reached to my belt for a fresh magazine.

But this alley fight was over and all the dogs were down.

The main warehouse doors blew open and a second wave of SWAT came in like a swarm of pissed-off scorpions and anyone dumb enough to be still holding a gun went to meet Jesus — or whoever — in nothing flat.

(4)

In the end, eleven alleged terrorists were shot, six fatally including the cowboy with the Chinese assault rifle and the biter I nailed in the back — who according to his false ID was named Javad Mustapha. A terrorist with ties to El Mujahid. Turned out that none of our team was killed, though eight of them needed treatment, mostly for broken ribs. We were all rattled, but in the end it was a damn good day’s work.

I checked on Jerry. Kevlar stops bullets but it can’t stop foot-pounds of impact. Jerry had a cracked sternum and was one hurting pup.

“How you feeling, ya old fart?” I asked, squatting next to the gurney to which the EMTs had strapped him.

“Steal me that Cigarette boat and I’ll feel right as rain.” He ticked his chin toward my arm. “Hey, how’s your arm? EMT said you got bit.”

“Didn’t even break the skin. Weird sumbitch though, wasn’t he?”

“Looked to me like he came out of that blue box. The lock blew off and he stepped out, batshit crazy and looking at us like we’re Sunday dinner. McGoran said you popped him.”

“Seemed like the thing to do at the time.”

Jerry nodded, then gave me a faint smile. “Everybody’s talking about you, Joe. You saved some fellow officers today. I been hearing the ‘H’ word floating around.”

When I looked puzzled he explained, “Hero, son. That’s what they’re calling you.”

“Oh, please. I’m just one of the crowd, doing my job.”

He gave me a funny look, but it might have been the painkillers. The EMTs took him away and I watched as a bunch of federal agents in unmarked black BDUs came in to take over the crime scene.

Far as I was concerned it was all over.

Funny how wrong you can be about some things.

(5)

Nobody who worked for him or with him knew his real name. The President called him Mr. Church, and that would do for now. He sat in a temporary office in a disused records storage warehouse in Easton, Maryland. He had a laptop on his desk, a glass of water, and a plate of cookies. Nothing else.

Mr. Church selected a vanilla wafer and munched it thoughtfully as he watched the replay of the video feeds from the raid in Baltimore. He punched the pause button and turned the laptop around toward the three big federal agents who sat across from him. A man’s face filled the screen.

“His name is Detective Joe Ledger,” said Mr. Church. His eyes were almost invisible behind the tinted lenses of his glasses, and his face wore no expression. “Baltimore PD, attached to a Homeland task force. This footage was taken two days ago. This is the one I want. Bring him in.”