Night of Thunder

Bob’s hand flew at a speed which could never be known or measured, so fast that he himself had no sense of it happening, he just knew that the Kimber.38 Super was locked in his fist, his elbow locked against his side, his wrist stiff, the weird, maybe autistic brainfreak in his head solving the complexities of target identification, acquisition, alignment that had been the gift of the Swagger generations since the beginning, his muscles tight, all except the trigger finger, which-you get this about ten thousand repetitions into your shooting program-flew torqueless and true as it jacked back, slipped forward to reset then jacked back again, four times, all without disturbing the set of the gun in his hand. Brass bubbles flew through the air, as spent shells pitched by the Mach 2 speed of the flying slide as it cycled, all four within an inch or three of the others, and Bob put four.38 Super CorBons into the center-mass of the fellow closest to him, who immediately changed his mind about killing.

Nick fired. Bob’s opponent fired finally, but into the ground. The man on Nick fired twice more from a smallish silver handgun, though crazily, and Bob vectored in on him and fired three more times in that superfast zone that seems to defy all rational laws of physics. The night was rent by flash. From afar it must have looked like a photo opportunity as a beautiful star entered a nightclub, the air filling with incandescence, the smell of something burned, and the noise lost in the hugeness of all outdoors. But it was just the world’s true oldest profession, which is killers killing.

It was over in less than two seconds.

Bob dumped his not-quite-empty mag, slammed a new fresh one in and blinked to clear his eyes of strobe, then looked for targets. The guy he hit second was down flat, arms and legs akimbo, his silver revolver three or four feet away, weirdly gleaming in the dark from a random beam of light. The other fellow, hit first, was not down but he had dropped his gun. He walked aimlessly about, holding his stomach and screaming, “Daddy, I am so sorry!”

Bob watched as he went to a big car and settled next to it, his face resting on the bumper. The lack of rigidity in the body posture told the story.

Bob knelt to Nick.

“Hit bad, partner?”

“Ah, Christ,” said Nick, “can you believe this?”

“No, but it sure happened. I’m looking, I don’t see no blood on your chest.”

“He hit me in the leg, stupid fucker. Oh Christ, what a mess.”

By this time, people had come to their balconies and looked down upon the fallen men.

“Call an ambulance, please. This officer is hit. We are police!” yelled Bob.

But in seconds another man had arrived, a smallish Indian with a medical bag.

“I am Dr. Gupta,” he said, “the ambulance has been called. Can I help?”

“He’s hit in the leg. I don’t think it’s life threatening. Not a spurting artery.”

The doctor bent over, quickly ripped the seam of Nick’s suit pants with scissors, and revealed a single wound about an inch inboard on his right thigh, maybe off-center enough to have missed bone. The wound did not bleed profusely, but persistently. It was an ugly, mangled hole, muscles puckered and torn, bad news for weeks or months but maybe not years.

“Tie,” said the doctor.

Bob quickly unlooped Nick’s tie and handed it to the doctor, who wrapped it into a tourniquet above the wound, knotted it off, then pulled out and cracked open a box, removed a TraumaDEX squeeze applicator and squirted a dusting of the clotting agent on the wound to stop the blood flow.

“Don’t know when the ambulance will arrive in all this traffic. Can you give him something for pain?”

“No, no,” said Nick, “I am all right. Where’s that damned phone. Oh, shit, we can’t get a chopper in here. Oh, Christ, I need to-”

“You ain’t going nowhere,” said Bob, “except the ER.”

“Oh, Christ,” said Nick. “I hope they got my message.” But even as he said it, he knew it was hopeless, as did Bob. The shooters would bring their weapons to bear, the cops were strung out, the situation was a mess, nobody would know a thing, it was-

“I’ll get there,” said Bob.

“How, you can’t-”

“My daughter’s bike. It’s over there. I can ramrod through the traffic. I’ve got some firepower. I know where they’re going. I can intercept them at the hill, put some lead on them, maybe stop them from that chopper pick-up.”

“Swagger, you can’t-” but then he stopped.

“Okay,” said Bob. “Who, then? You see anybody else around? You want these lowlife fucks to get away with this thing, and the contempt it shows for all law enforcement, for civilians, for anything that gets in the way? You see anyone else here?”

But there wasn’t anybody else around. Funny, there never was.

“Here,” Nick finally said, “maybe this’ll stop the cops from shooting you.” He reached into his shirt and pulled out a badge on a chain around his neck. “This makes you officially FBI and there goes my career. Good luck. Oh, Jesus, you don’t have to do this.”