It was a cop. He knew him. Edwin Jackson. A family man. Two kids.
There was no easy way through this. Innocents would die simply because they followed orders. He didn’t want to kill anyone from the community but they had no choice. They wouldn’t back down and if push came to shove, the same cops would take them out.
Were they now the heroes or the villains?
The line between had blurred.
As quiet as suppressors could be, they weren’t entirely silent. They all knew that. When the four on the roof dropped, those on the ground turned and reached for a radio.
Colby squeezed the trigger just as Edwin brought the walkie-talkie up to his mouth.
That was the moment they shifted into overdrive.
Those patrolling dropped, one after the other, as multiple rounds from every direction overwhelmed them. They didn’t stand a chance. It was sudden. Unexpected. They were blindsided. Still for all the advantage they had, and numbers, not everyone outside bit the bullet. The few survivors that were injured rushed back to the building under the hail of gunfire. Two were taken out before they got in the door, the third managed to squeeze in and join the other three inside. With so few walkie-talkies available, he had to believe the first thing they would do before protecting the armory would be to call for backup. It was procedure.
All twenty of them moved in on the building, moving in combat intervals. Several more rounds were fired into those on the ground as they passed to be sure they were dead. They couldn’t take the risk of being shot in the back.
“Chances are they’ve called for backup,” Colby said.
“It won’t be much use,” Hank replied, giving a nod to his family. Each of them pulled off smoke grenades and flashbangs from their flak vests and tossed them through the windows. A bright light lit up the night followed by billowing smoke. From outside they could hear the men coughing as Hank tried the door but found it locked.
“Stand back,” he said. He took a few steps back and unleashed a flurry of rounds at the lock. Another one of his crew tossed in what Colby believed was another flashbang, in preparation for entry. It wasn’t. It was a grenade. There was a loud pop and then Faye Strickland pulled the door open and Hank and his family streamed in, guns blazing.
Rounds erupted but it was hard to see what was happening.
There were a few tense seconds before Hank stepped outside. “All clear.”
Those with Colby had already been instructed on what to do so there was no standing around. Two of them were pulling up a truck that was parked outside for the quick transportation of firearms. The rest formed a line, passing crates of firearms out and loading them in the back. As they were doing that, Colby could hear a voice over the walkie-talkie on one of the dead. He reached down and turned up the volume. “Peterson. Do you copy?”
It was John Boone.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Time was of the essence. Either those inside had raised the alarm or Boone was calling for the delivery of ammo at the access points. Either way, without a response it wouldn’t be long before they sent backup to find out what had happened. “Speed it up,” Colby bellowed. “We don’t have much time.”
“What are you so worried about?” Hank said. “If they show up we’ll take them out like we just did with these fools.”
“We had the element of surprise. Let’s go!” he said, clapping his hands together and joining the line to shift metal cases into the back. They moved quickly, loading up two trucks with as much as they could. There was no way they could take it all out but as long as they had the majority of ammo and the most dangerous firepower like rocket launchers, they would seriously hamstring their efforts.
Hank groaned and put a hand on his lower back. His age was showing. “You got a destination in mind for all of this?” he asked.
“I will once I’ve made contact with Johnson.”
“And where is he?”
“Right now, I don’t know.”
“Holy shit. I thought you had this arranged?”
“I do. But this isn’t all up to us. It depends a lot on Johnson and Wilder.”
“Shit,” Hank said, lifting a hand to his head. “I should have figured helping you Rikers would be the death of us.”
Colby stopped loading and approached him. “This isn’t about you or us. Okay! It’s about Nina. It’s about every single person that died in ward one, and out there in Arcata. Or have you already forgotten that?” He lifted a finger in the air and twirled it around. “Okay, that’s enough, let’s roll.” He glanced at his watch. He knew roughly how long it would take to get from the access gate to here.
“Where are we taking this?” Hank asked.
“South. WinCo Foods. I told him to meet us there in the parking lot at nine.” He glanced at his watch again. He’d estimated when they would get there if all went well. They were running late. It was also far enough away from the eastern access gates that it would take Boone time to reach them. For them Winco was less than ten minutes away.
As they peeled off into the night, feeling hopeful, Colby had this nagging feeling in the back of his mind that their plans were about to come crashing to the ground. So much of this relied on Johnson getting to Alicia and Dan, then them speaking with the community. Sure, they could hand out firearms to those in the neighborhoods around them, but that could be their downfall if those people supported the new regime.
“Please be there,” Colby muttered under his breath as he scanned the streets for Boone’s men. The distraction had worked. There was too much to be lost by sending men away from the
