“Sebastian,” Cal said, almost waking him up from his trance.
“Cal. Yes. Sorry?” he said, regaining his composure.
“Um, you okay?” Cal asked him. “That was some Bruce Lee shit back there, mate…”
“Those self-defense classes paid off I suppose,” he responded glibly with a smile which neither of them believed. “If you’ll excuse me?” he said before walking away, leaving the two with more questions than answers. They heard orders being given, polite orders but orders all the same, for people to head upstairs away from the ground floor.
Jake had dogged the pair of shooters nearly ten blocks like a relentless bloodhound, hoping for a chance to get a shot off or to miraculously bump into some backup. Without communications, he felt totally exposed and more vulnerable than he had ever been in his life. Still, he couldn’t let these two go, he couldn’t break off his pursuit, but neither could he see a way that this could end well.
Here am I, he recited from the book of Isaiah privately as though the words could steel his resolve and shroud him in righteous armor, send me.
Shouts up ahead made him pop his head over the hood of the car he was using as cover, and the responding burst of automatic fire didn’t take long to zero in on his position. The noises, the pattern of their cat and mouse engagement had changed somehow, but Jake had yet to figure it out. He heard shouts again, and more muted gunfire from the suppressed weapons he would have nightmares about for the rest of his life, but none of the shots fired came in his direction this time; they were engaged to their front.
Creeping low to the rear of a car, he sprinted across to the other side of the street without looking first so as not to give away his new position. He didn’t stop until he threw himself hard into the opposite sidewalk and tucked into cover. He hadn’t been seen, and hopefully the shooter who had taken a pop at him would not be expecting him on this side. Staying low, he moved toward the shouts and gunfire until he could hear the grunts and breathing of his suspects. Tucked in low with his back up against the front wheel of a car, Jake took three long and slow breaths to steady himself.
Peeking out, he saw the back of one of the shooters as he took cover behind a car up ahead, easily within accurate range of his Glock. He closed his eyes momentarily and stood.
He leveled his weapon, aiming for center mass, but couldn’t pull the trigger. Despite the crazy events, he couldn’t just execute a man in cold blood.
“NYPD, put your weapons on the ground, NOW!” he called out, sounding less authoritative than he intended. The shooter did not comply. Simultaneously spinning and dropping to the ground, a burst of gunfire erupted over Jake’s head and missed him by a hand’s breadth. His own answering shots, two solid hits to the chest, dropped the shooter.
He moved forward, eyes scanning ahead in fear of the second gunman. Taking a knee beside his suspect, he switched the Glock to a one-handed grip and put two fingers to the throat of the man. He felt warm skin, smooth where it should be stubbled, and glanced down. He saw two eyes wide open, not in death but alert. His own shock had no time to register this, even though body armor was something that he should’ve anticipated, and a reflected flash sparkled in front of his eye as a knife came toward him.
He had no time to disengage and use his sidearm. Had no time to issue a warning or use any of the disarming techniques he had been taught. Instead he acted instinctively, smashing the butt of his gun down on the face beside his knee. The crunch of bone sickened him, as did the sticky, metallic smell of the hot liquid on his hand, but the knife dropped with a clang to the street.
A shout ahead, too close for comfort, made his eyes snap up and into the fat, bulbous barrel of a stubby rifle aimed at him. Jake closed his eyes, and waited for oblivion.
AS USELESS AS THE ‘G’ IN LASAGNE
Friday 9:30 p.m. – Washington, D.C.
Major Taylor and his team had secured the White House along with all the senior members of staff. The president was livid, threatening each and every man with the death penalty for treason. Taylor was worried that he would start to have a negative effect on the moral of his troops, so he isolated him under the guard of two if his most trusted men.
Taylor acted confidently, but he did not feel at all confident. The longer their secret siege went on, the higher the risks of failure were. By now, events in New York were on schedule, and already the impact on the world financial market was huge. They were crippling their own country, albeit temporarily, but they did what they did for the greater good and the long-term prosperity of their beloved United States of America.
“Major, this is Johnson. Over,” came the squelch from his earpiece on their closed squad-net radio.
“Go,” came the terse response.
“Sir, the president would like to speak with you at your earliest convenience,” Johnson, an implacable if somewhat unthinking sergeant under his command, told him. It was one of the reasons he chose Johnson; he was efficient and ruthless, but lacked that extra layer of consciousness which would ever make the man question an order.
“On my way. Out,” replied Taylor. His intention was not to upset or injure the president in any way, and his orders were specific; the president was to be treated with the respect due his office. They needed him to legitimize their coup and to be the face of the new direction their country was heading in, whether he liked it or not. Demonstrating that they could reduce one of the biggest cities in on the continent, in the world in fact, to chaos, was a sharp axe to hold over a man’s neck.
Taylor stalked into the luxurious suite of rooms which had been turned into an isolation cell, nodded to Johnson and the other soldier, dismissing them.
“Sir,” he said, saluting, “you wanted to see me?” The man in front of him, red-faced as though the anger he was holding in would not stay shuttered up for long, regarded him.
“Taylor,” he said acidly, not so much remembering the man as reading his name from the uniform shirt, “just how long do you think this little charade will go on?” he asked him, taking the same approach as when they had first spoken.
“Sir, we need to keep you safe until morning. Then you can talk to my commanding officer—” Taylor said before being savagely cut off.
“I am your goddamned commanding officer, you son of a bitch,” the president snarled at him through bared teeth. “You’ve heard the term ‘Commander in Chief,’ have you not?”
“Yes, sir, I have,” Taylor said, still stood to attention and showing the respect the man’s position demanded, even if he had no respect for the man himself. He said nothing more, but turned and left the room offering another nod to the soldiers outside the door.
“This is treason, goddammit!” erupted the resident at his retreating back.
“Nobody in or out, and you have my permission to restrain him if he gets outta line,” he told Johnson. “Just don’t leave any visible injuries,” he added as he walked away, thinking of the press conference the president would be holding the following day.
Friday 9:38 p.m. – 17th Precinct, NYC
Jake closed his eyes, knowing he was about to die. The gunshot he heard didn’t sound right, nor did he feel any pain or impact from the bullet. A second and third shot rang out, interspersed with the rapid coughing sound of the weapon aimed at him. Only with the absence of his painful death did it occur to Jake that the unsuppressed shots could not have come from the silenced assault rifle which had promised his death only a second before. His brain eventually registered that the shots sounded just like those from his own gun, and he only opened an eye when the sound of a body slumping to the street made him jolt.