Wade got Jenkins’ attention. He’d have preferred Burgess, Flanagan, or Gomez, but Jenkins was there, and he’d have to do. “On me.” Getting to his feet, he sprinted across the dirt parking lot toward the front door.
Bianco saw him move and shifted fire to the windows on the right. Unfortunately, that meant that one of the Green Shirts on the left stuck his head up, saw the figures in tiger stripe cammies running toward the front door, and sprayed fire out through the shattered window.
Fortunately, he wasn’t exactly aiming, and his position wasn’t great, either. The muzzle climbed fast, the bullets quickly drilling holes in the sky. He stopped shooting altogether as Wade put a burst through the window on the move. It wasn’t accurate by any means, but it did what it was meant to do.
Then he was at the door. He didn’t bother trying to stack up, even though Jenkins was still a pace or two behind him. He just lowered his shoulder and hit it like a battering ram.
The realization that this could be a really bad idea if the door was barred or otherwise barricaded hit just before he did. But the Green Shirts had apparently been banking on terror, firepower, and the barred front gate to protect them. The door splintered and slammed inward.
Wade had overbalanced a little, and he went down on one shoulder as he went through the door. FuckfuckfuckfuckFUCK! He rolled to one side as he tried to kick his way out of the doorway, searching for targets and hoping he could kill them faster than they could turn to engage him.
A Green Shirt was crouched beneath the window right in front of him as he rolled to his right, trying to stay out of Bianco’s line of fire, and they locked eyes for a second. The Green Shirt looked older than Wade would have expected. He was a grizzled indio who might have been anywhere from his mid-forties to his early sixties. At a glance, Wade realized that the Green Shirt might have been doing this almost as long as he had.
But the Green Shirt was no Ranger. He had crouched down as far as he could get as Bianco’s machinegun fire scattered broken glass and smashed plaster over him, and his M16 was pointed at the ceiling.
Wade’s Galil was already pointed almost directly at his heart.
He hadn’t taken the selector off “A” when he’d gone through the door. The five-round burst tore the Green Shirt open from his belly button to his face, the last round punching through his eye and tearing out the back of his skull in a spray of red.
More gunfire thundered behind and above him, and brass rained down on his back where he lay on the floor.
Then he was rolling out of the way, onto his stomach, as more of the San Tabal irregulars flooded through the doorway, shooting at anything that moved.
***
Flanagan was committed, rounding the corner with his weapon up, dumping the last of his magazine into the three or four Green Shirts huddled behind the corner itself. Bullets thudded into flesh as his momentum carried him past the corner and up against the opposite wall. The Green Shirts tried to pivot to follow him, but the closest was already dying, and the other two couldn’t move fast enough, especially as the dying man slumped back against them.
With that short window of hesitation, Flanagan quickly hammered controlled pairs into each before finishing them off with headshots as they staggered back against the wall. The three of them slid down toward the floor in eerie synchronization, leaving a broad smear of red against the white plaster.
He shifted his eyes to check on Hank, only able to spare a glance. He was exposed as hell to the whole corridor, but it was otherwise empty for the moment.
The younger Brannigan was fine. He was still up, his rifle held ready, as Gomez moved to join Flanagan. “Junior, Gambler, bring it in.” They couldn’t afford to get separated at the moment.
Pacheco entered next at the head of a handful of San Tabal police. They took the other side of the corridor as the Blackhearts headed up the one Flanagan had covered.
***
By the time Wade had regained his feet, gunfire was thundering through the entire police station. It wasn’t a large building—the irregulars had moved fast. He could only imagine the pent-up bloodlust after being forced to cower at the feet of these Communist thugs for weeks. With Jenkins and Burgess in tow, Bianco holding on the door with a couple of the irregulars and Fuentes, he pushed toward the police commander’s office.
He remembered a time when he would have been worried about the locals just killing everyone inside. Not that he’d ever particularly cared on a personal level. But his position would have demanded that he keep the regulars and irregulars under his command under control. Now? Now the only reason he didn’t want the irregulars to slaughter every Green Shirt in the building was just because he wanted a few more to add to his tally.
The commander’s office was on the second floor. The ground floor had gone quiet—Green Shirt bodies were strewn on the floors of the offices and the jail post, along with several of the locals. The Green Shirts had gone down fighting, but they’d been killed, nevertheless. After what they’d done in San Tabal, there would be no quarter.
While the ground floor was quiet, gunfire thundered and roared
