Survivalist - 24 - Blood Assassins (20 page)

Tim Shaw and the six TAC Team men with him moved for cover, already returning fire as they ran.

The .45 in Shaw’s right fist fired twice, then twice again as he dropped down on his knees into the mud behind the cover of one of the synth-concrete benches positioned in the parkway along the median strip of James Madison Way. And Shaw snapped, “First time I wore this suit since it was cleaned—shit.” He snapped off another three rounds, then a fourth and tucked down to make a tactical magazine change. “You guys all right?”

It was his son’s voice coming to him through the earpiece for his radio.

The armored truck was picking up speed again, big clouds of grey smoke and some falling debris from the grenade impacts on either side of it. But the truck was seemingly unaffected and was coming right at them. “In about sixty seconds we won’t be, Eddie. Take the grenade launcher yourself and put a pair on ‘em, try knockin’ out the front tires. And hurry it up.”

Tim Shaw told himself to ignore the armored truck, then proceeded to do it. “Okay, you three with me, you guys, go for the other side. We close in on the van from both sides. Give us fifteen seconds then go for it.” And Tim Shaw was up, running, the guns in his hands spitting lead toward the open doorway of the van on the side nearest him. He reasoned that as long as he was moving, chances were slimmer that the armored truck would pile into him and the longer he left things with the van, the worse they’d get.

A grenade fired, then another and another.

Shaw glanced to his left, grinning ear to ear. The armored truck was stopped, the front tires blown off on both sides and the armored synth-glass windshield smudged black.

The guys in the armored truck would have to wait.

Shaw’s little .38 was empty and he dropped down behind another one of the benches, the distance to the grey van now less than twenty yards. Heavy automatic weapons fired and energy weapons’ blasts were impacting the palm trees, the bench, the muddy grass.

One of the TAC Team guys with him was wounded in the leg, but still operational.

“We’re closing in right down the middle in a car, Dad,” Eddie’s voice came through the earpiece again.

Tim Shaw had both pistols loaded again. He ordered the wounded man, “You stay here, Bill, and lay down a shitload of suppressive fire, but nice and high up ‘cause we’re gonna be under it. We’re goin’ in. Now!” Shaw was up and running.

The police car, windows down, guns firing out of all four positions, was coming dead on at the van, from the front, at a bad angle for the men inside the van to return fire. Tim Shaw saw a flash of movement on the far side, the rest of his men closing. Shaw held his fire, Bill’s suppressive fire from behind him keeping the men in the van back.

“Gas grenades. Get ‘em ready!”

They were five yards from the van now.

A man with an energy rifle threw himself into the doorway, firing it from hip level. Tim Shaw dodged left and fired both pistols from shoulder level, knocking the man down as the last of the energy bursts tore into the street near him. Shaw was moving again.

Shaw heard the whooshing sound of the gas grenades launching into the truck, clouds of tear gas billowing outward on the wind. The gas would be of little practical use, but would at least further confuse things inside the van.

And Shaw needed that as he reached it. There was a TAC Team man on either side of him. “Spray the van!” Shaw ordered, holding back for a second or two while the TAC Team men responded. One had a shotgun, the other a rifle, both men peppering the sides of the van with fire. Then Shaw went the last few feet and jumped, up and into the van, shouting into his radio, “Cover me but don’t kill me! Hold fire!”

Inside the van, a nearly fully loaded gun in each hand, Tim Shaw opened fire, his eyes starting to stream tears, but enough vision left to him to get the job done. A man with an energy rifle took two from the .45 in the thorax and in the forehead. Another man with one of the submachineguns took two 158-grain lead hollow-point semi-wadcutters from the little .38 in Shaw’s left hand, the submachinegun discharging as the man— one hand clasped to his chest—stumbled back. Bullets tore through the van’s roof.

Shaw fired the .45 and the .38 simultaneously, killing the second submachinegunner.

The van was starting to move.

Shaw lurched, fell to one knee.

The other men in the van were dead or wounded.

There was a flash of gunfire from the driver’s compartment.

Shaw could barely see any more, but he stabbed the .45 toward the origin of the gunfire and zigzagged the muzzle up and down and side to side as he emptied it. The passenger side front window blew outward and the body of the shooter went halfway through it.

The van was wheeling hard left.

Shaw stabbed the empty .45 into his pants, grabbed for the roof of the van, stumbled forward.

The driver was fumbling for a pistol.

Tim Shaw put a .38 into the man’s right temple, dove rearward, then threw himself out of the van.

As Shaw hit the pavement—hard, his left shoulder aching, his back reminding him he wasn’t that young anymore—the van jumped the median strip and crashed through one of the synth-concrete benches, then started climbing the trunk of the palm tree near it.

But it rolled onto its side, flames coming from the engine compartment.

Tim Shaw got up to his feet.

His son’s voice was in both ears, Eddie running toward him from the police car and shouting, but his radio still on, “Dad? You okay?”

Shaw started loading his guns. “Bill’s wounded— took one in the thigh—back over there,” and Shaw gestured toward the bench from behind which Bill had provided cover. “Get him some help. Whatchya gonna do?” And Tim Shaw gestured toward the armored truck.

“Just a sec.” Tim Shaw turned away, looking after the van. Some of the TAC Team people were pulling bodies out of it, living and dead. The fire was spreading, but slowly. Fire extinguishers started coming out. “Got Bill taken care of?”

Tim Shaw shoved the little .38 into his belt, the .45 cocked and locked, back in his right fist. “So?”

“We try rocking her over on the side with trucks after some volley fire from the grenade launchers to soften ‘em up and some gas before that to confuse ‘em. Of course, that’s after we ask them if they want to give up.”

“Your turn. I got to feel stupid the last time.”

Tim Shaw’s son nodded. There was a bullhorn suspended from a sling across Ed Shaw’s chest. Ed brought it up to his mouth. “Attention to those personnel in the armored truck. Your vehicle is disabled. You are surrounded. Come out with your hands up. You will not be harmed if you cooperate. You have one minute.”

“Pretty generous of ya,” Tim Shaw remarked to his son.

“Hey, I’m all heart.”

Tim Shaw looked at his wristwatch …

His right fist ached. Marie screamed. Perhaps he should have hit her instead of the wall, Doring thought. “Shut up, Marie! Go into the bathroom and shut up!”

“Yes!” And she ran from him.

His eyes went back to the television screen. Remote video from drones overflying the scene showed the armored truck to be out of commission, unable to move, the men in it trapped with their explosives. Perhaps they would have the courage and intelligence to detonate, turning the vehicle into a gigantic fragmentation grenade.

Doring himself would have done that.

And the other vehicle, the van, was destroyed.

There was ground camera coverage now, a long shot coming in on a group of men standing off to the side of the armored truck, almost equidistant between it and the van. All of the men were in black battle dress utilities, except for one. He wore a black fedora hat, a black raincoat, and in his right hand there was a handgun. The man was lighting a cigarette.

“Damn you!” Doring hissed through clenched teeth.

The first order of business would be to kill this man, Tim Shaw, this policeman.

They had tried killing his daughter, to send him a message. But Dr. Rourke had disrupted that. This time, however, there would be no message and no Dr. Rourke. And, Daimler vowed, no hirelings. He would take care of this American policeman himself, make certain that he could never interfere with their plans again.

Doring walked across the room, standing in front of the screen. He could still see Shaw, the half-amused look on the mongrelized face. “Laugh while you can,” Doring told the screen. “While you can.”

Thirty-seven

There was no reponse from the men inside the armored truck and the time limit—one minute—was long since up.

Ed Shaw was running it, Tim Shaw keeping his mouth shut on his son’s play. “Here’s what we do,” Ed Shaw began, a dozen of the TAC Team men assembled around him, Tim Shaw keeping off to the side. “We have to get the guys to come out of the truck because we can’t get inside to get ‘em, right? So they probably have masks, but it’s worth a shot to try some gas. It won’t make things better for them, that’s for sure.”

Tim Shaw’s eyes were still tearing from the gas he had endured, but he still didn’t trust to rubbing them because tear gas caused blood vessels in the eyes to distend and if the eyes were rubbed the blood vessels could rupture. Instead he turned his face into the wind again.

Ed Shaw was still outlining his plan. “If we launch gas in through those firing ports—and I know it won’t be easy, so don’t bother mentioning it—they’ll figure

that’s our play for the moment. But it won’t be. Once the gas is inside, we fire grenade launchers, trying to get the grenades under the truck. While the guys inside the truck are figuring out what’s happening, they’ll be away from the firing ports. And we need that. I’ve got three SWAT vans lined up on auto program so there won’t be any drivers to get killed. They’re electric, right, so we don’t have to worry about fire. So, the vans ram the armored truck and, if we’re lucky, flip it over. Then we pour everything we’ve got into the underside of the truck. While we’re doing that a bunch of us come up on the truck from the roof side where the guys inside can’t see us. Onto the truck, then the nasty part.”

Tim Shaw was enjoying this. His son, Ed, had a natural head for tactics and a gift for the bizarre. Putting those talents together made for a terrific field commander, which Ed was.

“Nasty part?”

Ed looked at the man who fed him the line. Ed smiled. “I’ve got industrial-sized chemical fire extinguishers coming up. Each man who goes to the trucks will have two of them. I figure a dozen of those can fill the interior of the armored car with foam making it impossible for the men inside to hold their positions because the foam will cover the respirator filters on their gas masks and the smell of the foam along with what’s left of the tear gas will force them out after they pull off the masks.

“Soon as they open the doors, we’ve got ‘em,” Ed Shaw concluded.

It was a good plan. A little more complicated than Tim Shaw liked, but a good plan and just crazy enough. No one inside the armored truck would be able to anticipate it. And that was even better.

Getting six gas grenades inside had consumed better than fifteen minutes and a good dozen more grenades were on the street, clouds of the tear gas still spewing up from them, the wind driving the rain, blowing the clouds down the street.

The three remotely operated SWAT vans were in place, but not ranked, so as to conceal from anyone watching from inside the armored truck what the plan was.

The grenadiers were starting to open fire against the undercarriage of the truck, and Tim Shaw held his ears against the sounds of the explosions as they started almost in series.

Beside Shaw, who was behind the cover of another of the vans, a shotgun rested, borrowed from inside the van. Logic, as opposed to legality, dictated that once the armored truck was overturned, instead of loading it up with chemical foam from fire extinguishers, they should load it up with lead from their guns. But police were supposed to arrest bad guys, not execute them, unless the latter was unavoidable.

They’d try the foam. If it didn’t work, they’d still have the guns.

Hardly anything in the way of identification was taken off the dead and injured from the grey van. There was a driver’s license on the man Tim Shaw had shot just before himself jumping from the van. One man had an Eden passport. Contract Nazi-sympathizers, gang

sters with political axes to grind, they were just about as talented.

These weren’t the same men who had hit the Country Day School or tried for Emma at her house, but Tim Shaw would have bet his pension check that they had the same leader. And if he could make himself as obvious as possible just maybe he’d become such a pain in the ass that they could make a try for him. If he could keep knocking off the soldiers, the general would come out of his hole and then Tim Shaw could get him. That was why Shaw hadn’t waved away the news cameras. He wanted his face on the screen.

It was saying to the leader of these guys, “Come and get me asshole.”

The grenade sequence was finished, more tires blown out, the body of the armored truck blackened, the vehicle otherwise appearing undamaged.

Shaw could see his son getting the TAC Team men ready for the assault as soon as the armored truck rolled over. Tim Shaw saw his son. He thought about his daughter. Ed might be in more danger than Emma, but at least it was a known, not an unknown.

Ed was going with the assult team. Tim Shaw was going too.

Ed gave the hand signal for the three trucks to be started out, the drivers aboard them getting them rolling then jumping clear. Ed Shaw started his team at a tangent down the street. Tim Shaw, the riot shotgun in his hands, running beside them. Tim Shaw’s left shoulder ached. He was too old for this sort of life but he loved it—not the killing. If he ever started liking that he’d join a monastery. But he liked the action. Too many people these days—maybe it could have been said at any time in history—were too ready to sit back and let the world run by them, let everyone else take the risks, fight the fights, do what had to be done.

The three SWAT vans were in perfect synchronization now, picking up speed but obviously in low, coming dead on at the armored truck.