Gil came through the stairwell door, his rifle flashing bullets into the backs of the last three men. Making sharp popping sounds, just a bit louder than the impacts of the bullets themselves, as they sunk into flesh. All three went down and he planted a last round in the face of the man that Max was still thrashing.
Jerome kept his rifle planted on the room where the men had pointed guns at him, but no one appeared.
Gil Mason picked up on the apartment and advanced, his weapon pointing at the doorway, the monster dog padding beside him at his right leg.
Jerome left the relative safety of the elevator and closed in from the opposite direction.
Gil stopped Jerome a few feet back from the doorway with a hand signal. He pulled a flashbang from one of the many pockets his BDU pants sported. Pulling the pin, he tossed it into the room. The sounds of scrambling could be heard and then the body-numbing explosion of noise and light. Gil moved in fast before the shock could wear off, Max beside him. Two gang members staggered about inside the room, both holding guns. Gil shot the closest two times, center mass. Max charged, striking the other man just as he was pulling his gun up. Max hit him full force in the crotch and the man swung down instinctively with the butt, smacking Max in the head. That made him mad and he twisted and tore back, wreaking havoc on the tender flesh of the nineteen year old. Jerome put a bullet in the boys chest and he fell back, gasping for air that he would never breathe.
Ziggy sat in a chair in the middle of the room, eyes wide and his head twitching like a bird. A woman and another man sat close by on a couch.
Jerome looked down at Ziggy and started to reach for him.
Gil saw the fear in Ziggy’s eyes and stopped him with a hand on his wrist. “Wait.”
Ziggy nodded his head wildly, jerking his chin toward his lap.
Gil knelt down and saw the wires and plastique. He was no explosive tech, but he’d worked more than a few bomb dogs over the years and knew a pressure device when he saw one. Standing, he placed a hand on Ziggy’s shoulder and looked at Jerome.
“He’s sitting on about a pound of C4. If he stands, we all go boom.”
“Then what’s the play?”
Gil scanned the room. Seeing the dead, something struck him. “I see Bloods, but where are the suits?”
“Suits?”
“Secret Service. Clyde.”
“Not here,” said Jerome.
It was then that Gil remembered the ‘plus one rule’. If there’s one there’s two. The adage usually applied to searching for bad guys and finding one, but it held just as true for explosives. Jerking his head, he saw a small red flashing light under the counter by the sink.
“OUT!” yelled Gil, pushing the big man toward the door. He flashed a hand signal to Max and the dog leapt as the room disintegrated.
41
I saw the flash and felt weightless as a hot hand picked me up and tossed me, like the careless gods of mythology. My head and shoulder smashed into something immovable and then I saw nothing for a span of unknown time. When I woke up, my hearing was gone and blood ran down from my head and into my face. I swiped it away, feeling a twinge in my right shoulder. Heat blasted at me from behind and when I looked back I saw fire raging from a room that was no longer there. The entire floor was gone, sunken into the room below, and a sea of raging flames. Ziggy had simply ceased to exist. My brain wasn’t working quite right just yet, so I couldn’t put things together. Jerome lay on the floor in front of me, his eyebrows burned off and blood seeping from his ears and nose. Max lay on his side a few feet away. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing. That helped me to pull everything together and I pushed myself to my knees. Debris and chunks of drywall weighted down my left foot, but I was able to disentangle it and drag myself the rest of the way into the hallway.
Smoke billowed from the room, reminding me of a certain battle in Afghanistan, and I pulled my shirt up over my nose and mouth as a makeshift filter. It wouldn’t help much, smoke is extremely poisonous, but something is better than nothing. I had to get moving. Smoke is the big killer in most fires, but those flames would do just fine if we didn’t get out of here fast.
There was no time to check and see if either Max or Jerome were alive or not, so I pulled myself up and grabbed hold of Jerome’s gun strap and Max’s collar and dragged them to the stairwell I’d just come through a few moments earlier. The door opened inward into the well and I reared back and kicked it hard as I could. The hinges snapped and the door flew back before hitting the landing with a loud slap. I realized my hearing was coming back because I heard the sound.
I stopped for a second to get my breath. I saw red flickers in the lower stairwell, below smoke thick as water, telling me this way was blocked. I shook Max, but he just rocked back and forth limply. But his chest rose and fell, telling me he was alive at least.
Smacking Jerome did no good, he was out cold like my dog. I looked up the stairwell trying to think. No way could I take them both at the same time.
I hoisted Max onto my shoulders and ran the two floors to the top of the elevator shaft. The fresh air
