Eric looked at Cindy. “I spent six years in the Marines — a tour in Afghanistan and two in Iraq. Trust me, those are mortars those guys are firing,” he insisted. He picked up speed as they headed closer to their firing point.
“What are you doing, Eric? We’re just supposed to find them and call it in, not go all Dwayne Johnson on them.”
“Dwayne Johnson — God, she makes me feel old,” he thought.
“I’m getting us to the intersection, and then we’ll stop and wait,” he explained. “This way if they try to run, we’ll see what direction they head in.” He could hear the fear in her voice but knew he had to get there.
As their vehicle approached the intersection, Eric spotted a brief flicker of light, which he immediately recognized as a muzzle flash. In the fraction of a second it took his eyes to see it, he veered the car hard to the left and slammed on the brakes, causing Cindy to instinctively grab for anything she could to steady herself.
In seconds, the front windshield exploded in tiny plexiglass chunks. Then Cindy’s passenger-side window shattered, peppering her with the same tiny chunks of glass. When the car came to a halt, Eric jumped out of the driver’s side door and then pulled his partner across his seat, out the door. As they hid behind the car, dozens of high-velocity rounds tore through their vehicle.
He hastily grabbed his radio. “This is Six Delta — we’re taking heavy fire! Requesting backup at once. They have the intersection of National and McClain bracketed. Approach with caution. I say again, Six Delta is under heavy fire. Requesting help!” He yelled into his mic to be heard over the increasing volume of gunfire.
Cindy lay on the ground with her hands pulled up around her head as she just screamed in fear. Their vehicle was being torn apart by the barrage of gunfire. “Cindy! I need your help!” Eric yelled. “Shoot back at them, so we can get them to stop firing and take cover!”
He reached down and shook her, trying to get her attention. When she looked up at him, he repeated his instructions. She nodded as she tried to regain her composure and unstrap her sidearm. Eric popped up from behind the hood of his car and fired several rounds in the direction of the gunfire. He saw a couple of figures stop shooting as they took cover. Then a slew of rounds tore into the hood of the car, right where his head had just been before he ducked down.
Cindy popped up near the rear of the vehicle and fired four or five rounds at the Russians before ducking back down. Eric fired a second barrage of bullets at the attackers before reloading his firearm. He heard several of them calling out to each other in Russian, and he had no idea what they were going to do next. The sound of the mortars continued to whistle in the background, but the gunfire from the enemy soldiers had stopped. Eric popped up to take a quick look and see if he could spot one of the attackers long enough to shoot him.
Seeing movement to his right, Eric turned his pistol and fired off one shot before he felt something slam into his left arm and his chest, knocking him to the ground. As Eric’s body hit the ground, he wasn’t sure how bad his injuries were. His arm felt like it had been shattered, and it was hard to breathe, but he knew he had his vest on with the plates, so chances were, the bullet hadn’t gone through. He turned to look for Cindy and saw her firing at an unseen attacker. She got off three rounds before he saw the top part of her head explode. Her body collapsed to the ground just a few feet away from him.
Lying on the ground, unable to really move, Eric knew the Russians must be moving in on them to finish them off. As he lay there waiting for the inevitable, his mind wandered to a couple of days earlier, when he was enjoying the BBQ with his wife and their two little girls.
“I wish I could be there for them,” he thought to himself as a dark figure rounded the police cruiser.
The figure lifted his rifle and fired a couple of rounds into Cindy to make sure she was dead.
“No playing possum with these guys,” Eric realized.
Summoning the last bit of strength he had, he raised his pistol and fired as many times as he could at the soldier that had just shot at Cindy.
Eric saw the soldier grab at his neck just before he felt half a dozen sledgehammers hit his body. Everything quickly went black, just like the night sky his eyes were now blankly staring at.
Major Sasha Popov yelled at his men. “Hurry up and get in the SUVs!” They needed to get out of there.
Although Vasiliev’s men had managed to kill the two police officers who had discovered them, they had lost one of their teammates in the gunfight. They would have to leave his body. As much as it pained Popov to leave a fallen comrade, they had to head out to the safe house before the authorities sent more vehicles to their location.
They were in such a hurry that they left the mortar tubes behind, along with everything else that wasn’t absolutely vital to take with them. When they arrived at the safe house, they would get their next set of orders, and there would be another way for them to obtain further weapons. The only thing that really concerned Major Popov as they rushed away from the scene was the possibility of the police recovering potential forensic evidence. The thermite grenades they’d left to destroy the equipment would do a pretty good job, but there was no way to guarantee they had destroyed everything.
As they sped down the county road, Major Popov spotted a police cruiser with his flashing lights on. The car sailed right past them at high speed, probably heading toward his comrade. In minutes, they approached Interstate 75 and headed south. The three SUVs picked up speed, but the drivers limited themselves to roughly eight miles over the speed limit so as not to draw too much scrutiny to their little convoy. They would need to drive roughly twenty miles down the road before they would get off and change vehicles. There was a small utility van that had been pre-positioned for a situation like this; it could hold the entire team in one vehicle. Driving in a three-vehicle convoy would attract attention if they did it for too long.
Thirty minutes went by before they found the black utility van they had hidden the day before. Climbing into the back of the van and piling their remaining weapons and equipment inside, they placed camouflaged netting over the three SUVs, hoping to hide them for a few more days.
“I wish we could just burn the vehicles,” Major Popov lamented. However, he knew that would create too much fire and smoke, drawing the attention of the authorities.
Once everyone was in the van, they drove another three hours until they came to the next Airbnb house Popov had rented for the group. They would hole up at this location for three days before moving on to the next safe house. Then they’d repeat the process over again.
Potential Unrest
George Philips could not believe what was going on in his country. President Gates’ ascendency to the White House had been nothing short of disastrous. He firmly believed that Gates’ disregard for the law, the judicial system, and his fascist tendencies were a threat to the core principles and beliefs enshrined in the Constitution. Even his doctoral professor had said the President was a disgrace to the office and should be resisted at every possible opportunity. Like most progressives, George had a very difficult time accepting the results of the 2016 election. There was just no way someone so crass, unprepared, and lacking in political understanding could possibly win the election. Yet here he was, sitting in the White House, irritating the country like sandpaper on a festering wound.