Брайан Гарфилд - The Marksman

Several police cars silently roll up and stop, forming a perimeter around the gun shop. Quietly, cops on foot steer pedestrian passers-by away. As cops barricade themselves, surrounding the gun shop, Commander Clay gets out of her car and meets Dickinson. They talk in hushed voices.

She says, “We’ve had trouble with him before. Automatic weapons, illegal sales.”

“We think Radford’s in there with him. They’ve got a real arsenal in there. Keep your heads down.”

Harry is on his knees. Anne fidgets. Radford flexes the nutcracker. “Tell me about it. Tell me about your outfit.”

Harry hesitates; Anne begins to speak; and they all stop, frozen by the sound of Commander Clay’s voice amplified on a bullhorn outside: “This is the police. You in the gun shop — we have you surrounded. You’ve got one minute to come out with your hands in the air.”

Radford’s eyes dart from front to back. He settles back hard on his heels, his face bleak. Harry’s grunt overlaps the bullhorn speech: “Holy shit!” Anne doesn’t know which way to turn. Radford finally swings toward the front, where the bullhorn sound comes from, and in that instant while his back is turned, Harry swiftly feeds a belt of ammunition into the tripod-mounted machine gun.

Radford catches this corner-of-the-eye action just in time and dives to one side, knocking Anne protectively to the floor just as Harry begins to shoot — full-rate automatic fire — the bullets shattering the big levelor blind and the front plate-glass window…

Cops cover their heads and hunker down as machine gun bullets from the shop spray the street, ricocheting everywhere, smashing car windows, creating havoc…

Commander Clay is rock steady. “Tear gas — now!”

And Dickinson simultaneously shouts, “Open fire. Fire at will. Son of a bitch!”

Clay’s angry “No!” and her sharp look are too late to stop the chaos. Cops open up with revolvers and shotguns. One of them fires a tear gas grenade from a flare pistol into the store.

Inside, the grenade explodes in a puff of evil smoke near the front of the shop. Harry is blazing away, having lunatic fun, overheating the machine gun. Police bullets return the fire, banging around inside the shop, and Radford shoves Anne toward the cover of the counter and scrambles to follow. Tear gas rolls back toward them. All three begin to cough. Radford growls at Harry: “You gun-happy son of a bitch!”

A blaze of police bullets shatters glass everywhere. Anne goes down, shot. Radford tries to protect her. “Give her a hand here!”

Harry ignores him — maybe doesn’t even hear him; must have adrenalin pumping so loud he can’t hear a thing. His machine gun swivels back and forth, raking the street. And runs empty.

Radford lowers Anne gently to the floor.

Harry with deranged glee yanks open a hidden floorboard compartment, heaves out a goddamn flame thrower, ignites the sumbitch and starts to shoot a long spout of deadly flame out through the smoke toward the street.

Under the smoke Radford is trying to rouse Anne but he sees that she’s dead. Finally — coughing desperately — he’s driven back, stumbling back into the fog of tear-gas and smoke.

The roaring blast of flame hoses out from the smoky smashed front of the shop. Cops fall back, desperately seeking cover. And the idiot’s flamethrower has set half the shop on fire; it’s blazing dreadfully.

Inside the thick smoke, coughing, Radford pounces on Harry and wrestles the flamethrower away from him and turns it off.

Harry shoves him away. Both men are coughing hard. Harry yells like a spoiled child whose toy has been taken away. He jumps up and down, throwing a tantrum.

Radford yells at him. “Get down, you stupid—”

But the warning is too late. Harry goes down, cut to pieces in a fusillade of police gunfire.

Amid ragged aftervolleys of police gunfire the smoke billows from the smashed front of the shop. Finally Clay, very weary, stands up. “Cease fire, for God’s sake.”

Total stillness now. An expectant hush. Cops begin to peer out from behind cover…

Now several cars in convoy arrive — Vickers and his G-men get out of them; Vickers deploys his troops with hand motions. Vickers as usual is dressed like a suit mannequin in an expensive shop window.

Dickinson says dryly to Clay, “Cavalry to the rescue right in the nick of time, like always.” As the feds approach, Dickinson gets up and greets them in some disgust, addressing his insult to Vickers: “Here’s Ken. Where’s Barbie?”

“Don’t fart around with me, cop.”

Clay ignores him; she says to Dickinson, “Put another tear-gas round in there. I want to be sure.”

Another tear-gas grenade lobs into the smoke. There’s the muffled puff of its explosion inside the inferno.

Vickers stands with his hands in his pockets, looking dubious. “You sure he’s in there?”

Clay says, “Let’s wait and see.”

Dickinson says, “Nothing alive in there by now but maybe a few cockroaches.”

Vickers thinks a moment, visibly. Then he pulls a riot shotgun out of the nearest cop car and, carrying it, circles around toward the back of the shop. The smoke thickens. Flames appear; the building is a goner. Everyone waits…

Behind the gun shop the armored limousine stands near the back door and Vickers sees cops farther back, in a rough perimeter around the back of the shop, watching nervously. Vickers moves in closer to the building, shotgun in hand, working from cover to cover. Smoke pours from the building, beginning to obscure it, but Vickers can make out the back door. It stands wide open.

Radford comes out on his belly, holding a wet towel across his mouth and nose, snaking under the smoke. Billows envelop the armored limo, hiding it, and he slides through it into the driver’s seat of the limo.

Vickers is squinting against the smoke and flames, trying to see the back of the shop. He peers intensely, then suddenly reacts as, like a monster from hell, the armored limo comes roaring out of the smoke straight at him.

Vickers blasts it with the shotgun.

It has no effect.

He drops the shotgun and now stands with feet spread, revolver lifted in both hands, fearlessly shooting at the windshield as the limo roars straight at him.

The limo roars forward. Bullets bounce off the glass.

It veers at the last minute and slithers past Vickers, fishtailing into an alley. Vickers swivels and pulls the trigger again but his revolver is empty…

Around him, cops are blazing away at the fleeing car. Hit but unscathed, the limo skids away, bullets ricocheting off its armored body.

All around the burning shop, police cars and government cars begin to peel out in pursuit. Vickers leaps into one of them, and it nearly collides with arriving fire engines…

Radford flees in the armored limo, pursued by an army whose bullets bounce off the armored metal and glass and rubber.

Into a six-point intersection, late at night, police cars converge from every street and alley until they create a tangled gridlock. Everyone stops. Cops and feds emerge from cars — some furious, some simply bewildered.

Clay and Vickers get out of adjacent cars. Clay on her cellular phone. She’s looking up at a helicopter that swoops overhead; she’s talking to its pilot. “Which one?” She gets an answer, glances at Vickers and points to a parking garage.

Solid buildings all around the intersection. No way out except the streets, which are clogged with cop cars. Various stores (closed for the night), office buildings, restaurants, a theatre with surprised patrons at the front door watching the Keystone Kop activity.

Vickers and Clay walk slowly toward the garage, ushering cops in with arm signals. Heavily armed, the detachment deploys into the building.