“What was that?” Ryan asked, reminding Jonathan that in the zero-light environment, the kid was literally blind.
Beyond the interior door, a battle raged.
The anteroom provided no decent cover. Jonathan escorted Ryan to the exterior corner. “Stay here,” he instructed. “No matter what, stay right here.”
Ryan nodded.
“Say it,” Jonathan said. In stressful moments, people are many times more likely to remember something they’re told if they say it aloud.
“I’ll stay here.”
“No matter what.”
“No matter what. Can I have a gun?”
“No.” He didn’t have time for this. Boxers needed “A knife, then,” Ryan said. “I’m not letting them take me again. I’m not letting them cut off my head.”
Something in the words resonated with Jonathan. There was a desperation to them, but also a visceral commitment. And the kid had a point. At Resurrection House, Jonathan told the children that if someone tries to snatch them, they should fight to the death.
How was this different?
He lifted the trouser flap near his right calf, and produced a. 38-caliber snub-nose revolver. It was his last- resort backup weapon. He placed it in Ryan’s hand.
“Tell me you’re left handed,” he said.
“Okay, I’m left handed.”
Jonathan caught the tone. “But you’re not, are you?”
“ No.”
“Consistent with the rest of the night,” he said.
“Scorpion, Big Guy,” Boxers shouted in his ear above the chatter of gunfire. “Sit rep? I sure could use some company.”
Jonathan kept his focus on Ryan. “You don’t have to cock it,” he instructed. “Just point it and shoot. You’ll have to pull the trigger kind of hard. You have five shots.”
“If they get to me, I’ll only need one,” he said.
That one stunned him. He clamped his hand around the gun. “Listen to me, Ryan. I made a deal to bring you and your mom home safely. If you shoot yourself, I swear to God, I’ll kill you.”
Even in the artificial light, he saw the boy smile. He got the irony.
Now it was time to join the war.
Gail understood that the promise to come get her was an empty one. This vehicle was their only way out. Without it, the entire mission was doomed. Looking back, she realized that it had been doomed from the beginning. The whole thing had been driven by too much testosterone and bravado, and not nearly enough thought.
Yet, she’d gone along, and here she was. Having witnessed what they’d tried to do to that little boy, she could only imagine what they had in store for her. She wasn’t going to give them that chance.
It was useless to resist as the mob rolled the pickup truck all the way onto its roof so that they could drag her out through the broken windows. She closed her eyes as she passed through the shards, and once her face was clear, her gear kept her pretty well protected from the rest of the wreckage. Her only hope was they would be so distracted by manhandling her that they wouldn’t notice in the dim light that the tactical holster on her thigh was empty.
They stood her up and pushed her backwards against the side of the vehicle. Hands started to paw at her. She fired her Glock from her hip, and the attacker closest to her dropped. Perhaps the noise was lost in the gunfire coming from the church, but the remaining attackers did not react until she fired again. And again. As two more attackers fell, the others caught on. Most backed away a few steps, some ran. Two raised their rifles. She shot them both, one in the forehead, one on the point of her jaw.
Startled, the rest of the crowd dove for cover. She knew they wouldn’t stay down for long, and from what she could see, most of them were armed; they just hadn’t yet set themselves to fight. She emptied her Glock at the assembled crowd as she scooted away, not so much aiming as peppering them. The intent was to keep their faces in the frozen ground long enough for her to get out.
When the slide locked back, she dropped the empty mag and slapped in a new one on the run. She slid the pistol back into its holster and switched her hands to the M4 dangling from its sling.
Nothing in her FBI training had ever addressed full-out retreat like this, but she instinctively knew to run in a zigzag and to keep low. She thought she heard firing behind her, but she didn’t turn to verify. All that mattered was that she hadn’t yet been hit. As long as that was the case, she was fine.
Her only hope at this point was to get to the black side of the church. From there, she’d at least have some cover. After that, well. ..
When she got to the red-black corner, Gail hook-slid on her butt and rolled to her stomach with her weapon poised on her shoulder. Even without night vision, she could make out a cluster of five or six of them running after her. When they saw her go to ground, two dropped to their knees and brought weapons to their shoulders. The others assumed standing firing positions.
She saw muzzle flashes and she opened up on them. They all dropped, though she wasn’t at all sure that she’d hit any of them. Moving with speed she hadn’t mustered in a very long time, she belly-crawled to the shelter of the back wall, where she switched to a left-handed grip and peered back around the corner at the troops she’d just shot at.
She felt a huge relief as she saw them all running away.
The first indication she had that anyone was behind her was when something heavy smashed into the back of her head.
Jonathan pressed his mike button and said, “I’m entering from a door on the green side.”
“About damn time,” Boxers replied. “If it’s the door I think it is, you’ll be able to hook left a few feet and enfilade these assholes. They’re all hunkering under pews and shooting like girls. I’m at the green-white corner. When you’re ready, I’ll lay down covering fire for you.”
Jonathan inched the door open enough to slither out on his belly and pushed it closed again. It was indeed a church, and it was lighted by a massive, three-tiered candlestick chandelier, which cast a bizarre, dancing light in Jonathan’s night vision. “Ready,” he said.
The second syllable had barely left his mouth when Boxers opened up from Jonathan’s right. The M4’s muzzle flashes nearly whited out Jonathan’s NVGs.
To his left, he saw chunks of wood flying from the wooden pews, and he knew precisely where the bad guys were. He pivoted to his left, rose to a crouch, and with his weapon up and ready, he advanced down the side aisle until he was even with the rows Boxers was targeting.
There they were. He didn’t have time to count, but it looked like eight or ten of them. They all wore the stupid caftans, and each of them was armed with some form of rifle, not that they were doing them any good at the moment. They looked more like they were trying to melt into the floor.
They looked so frightened that Jonathan decided to give them a single chance at survival. He said into his radio, “Cease fire.”
Boxers’ fusillade ceased as quickly as it had started.
In the silence that followed, Jonathan bellowed, “Nobody move! Stay down or I will kill you.”
Instinctively, he supposed, two of the shooters raised up. Jonathan stitched the wood above their heads with a three-round burst, and they dropped again.
“Down means down, assholes!” His tone was equal parts madman and drill instructor, specially cultivated for moments just like this. “Flat on the ground, arms out, fingers splayed. That’s the only way you survive.”
He sensed movement to his right from the white-green corner, and a quick glance confirmed that Boxers has risen to give him better cover.
“Everybody over there good, Big Guy?”
“One of us is bruised up and scared shitless, but-” He cut off his words and shifted his aim toward the back wall. “Guns!”
Boxers opened up at the back wall, where a black-clad figure pivoted and fell.
