John Gilstrap - Threat warning

“Wait!” Plano yelled. “I have a key.”

Boxers fired a savage kick to the door that cracked the frame, but the door stayed in place. The second kick did the trick. The door exploded inward and rebounded off the parallel wall.

“I have a key, too,” Jonathan said. Leading with their drawn pistols, he and Boxers squirted into the room, side by side, the Big Guy covering high and right, Digger covering low and left.

Farmer and Plano stayed in the hall. “Ah, shit,” Farmer moaned. “Do you have a warrant for this?”

They were in the anteroom of a larger office outfitted in a colonial decor, with wingback guest chairs and a faux-mahogany receptionist’s desk. An ugly splash of blood marred the papered wall behind the desk.

“Hey, Scorpion?” Boxers whispered. He nodded to the space on the floor behind the desk, where the body of a woman in her fifties lay in a heap, surrounded by a lake of blood.

Jonathan nodded toward the office door farthest to the right. “That’s the one farthest south,” he whispered.

“Oh, my God,” Farmer yelped. “Oh, holy shit. She’s dead.”

Boxers said, “Mr. Farmer, Mr. Plano, you may draw your weapons now.”

Michael Copley’s ballistic computer told him everything he needed. He knew the drift and drop, and he held the spot perfectly still in the reticle of his telescopic sight. The sandbags gave him a rock-steady platform for the rifle. The weaknesses from this point on would all be man-made. At this range, every twitch mattered, every jolt of adrenaline. When the time came, he would squeeze the trigger between heartbeats.

With less than two minutes left, he felt a sense of calm settling over him. After so many years of dreaming and of practicing, now was not the time to seize up, either physically or mentally. It was just as he told his soldiers. Now, if he could keep only half the focus that they’d been able to display thus far in the war Someone rang the doorbell. What a ridiculous sound that was in a business environment. Ding-dong, Avon calling. He ignored it, of course. Whoever it was could come back or not; it wasn’t as if the accountants at Beacon were going to be giving a lot of advice in the coming eternity. If it was a customer coming in for an appointment, they’d surely be upset, and then maybe they’d call to complain. So what?

Even if someone suspected that something was wrong, by the time Boom!

That was no knock. That sounded like a battering ram. Then it was followed by a huge bang that shook the entire office suite. Someone was invading.

No, no, no…

He lifted his cheek from the buttstock to look behind him at the locked door that separated him from his attackers, and then returned to his rifle.

Just take the shot! his mind screamed. He’d made snap shots before. He’d proved it just yesterday by blast-butchering a cow. He tucked his cheek to the buttstock again.

The clock read fifty-five seconds.

Behind him, he heard voices, and then someone yelled, “Holy shit! She’s dead.”

Forty-eight seconds.

Too many distractions. Even this little bit of time was plenty of time for him to resolve the threat and still finish the job.

Rising from the rifle, he spun away from the table and snatched up the Remington 1100 semiauto twelve-gauge from where it rested against the wall and brought it to his shoulder. Dropping to one knee, he took aim at the center of the door and fired.

The inner office door erupted as the double-ought buckshot punched a fist-size hole. Jonathan felt the breeze cut by ballistic path as a plug of nine. 32-caliber pellets passed way too close at twelve hundred feet per second. He threw himself to the ground and yelled, “Down!” at the same instant that Boxers yelled, “Gun!” and likewise kissed the floor. From the corner of his eye, he saw a crimson spray as Plano pirouetted and fell, dead before the pellets exited his body.

A second shot followed a half second later, and then a third. The shattering bits of office all around him formed a cloud in the air.

Inexplicably, Farmer just stood there, stunned and staring.

“Farmer! Get down!”

A fourth shot caught the guard full-on in the belly, and then he was gone, too.

Jonathan rolled left, across the floor toward another office, but the shooter had anticipated the move and fired a fifth shot that pummeled the wooden filing cabinet over his head.

Jonathan looked to Boxers to check his status, and found the Big Guy trapped in the corner closest to the shooter’s door, curled into a ball and trying unsuccessfully to look small.

Up and down the fourteenth floor, people had started to dial into the violence, and that’s when the panicked screams started.

As Brother Franklin Demerest watched the digital clock tick down past thirty seconds, his heart hammered as if to break free of his rib cage. His palms were slick with sweat, and despite the open window and the frigid breeze, the room felt stifling-a hundred degrees and the air too thick to breathe.

This was fear, and it was the emotion that he dreaded most. His shot was eighty-three yards shorter than Brother Michael’s, but in some ways required more precision. The bullets he fired would hit from the president’s right side, catching the podium in a cross fire. Once his rounds passed through their initial target-which they would easily do-it looked from the pictures on the television as if they would threaten only the chaplain, and then whoever happened to be in the wings of the makeshift stage.

It was Brother Michael’s bullets that would do the real damage, which was why he had chosen that perch for himself. From the position on Coolidge Avenue, whatever bullets passed through or missed their mark would drill on into the crowd. Every shot Brother Michael fired, then, would cause destruction. Franklin, by contrast, had to shift his aim a full thirty degrees to the right after his first five shots onto the stage to empty the remaining five shots into the crowd.

Thirteen seconds.

Despite the sandbags that wedged the giant Barrett rifle into place, the reticle of his scope quivered and the sight picture danced from his pounding heart and trembling hands. His breathing chugged too fast. He inhaled deeply in a loud, throaty gasp and held it, the way he used to hold the pot smoke back when he was in college, and then he let it go. That should settle him down.

Seven seconds.

He reacquired his spot, though it still danced. He took another deep breath, let half of it go, and then held the rest as he settled his finger on the trigger and counted down in his head.

Four… three… two…

The pace of the shotgun blasts told Jonathan that the shooter had a semiautomatic-there were too many rounds for an over-and-under, and the cycle rate was faster than even the most skilled guys could shuck a shucker.

When the gun went silent after five rounds, Jonathan suspected that he was reloading, but there was no way to tell. One thing he was sure of was that cowering on the floor accomplished nothing.

He looked to Boxers and got an enthusiastic thumbs-up as the Big Guy rose to his haunches. Sometimes a warrior’s greatest weakness was hesitation. He’d taught that at the Operator Training Course, and it was the mantra that guided Boxers’ life.

Jonathan nodded his assent and rose to a crouch. Boxers kicked the door.

With the threat in the outer office neutralized-or at least distracted-Michael returned to his chair and his rifle. The clock no longer mattered. His time for martyrdom had arrived, and chances were good that he would die before the clock ticked to zero. That meant that he needed to abandon the plan to achieve the goal.

The Barrett settled into his shoulder like a familiar lover.

He acquired his spot, and his finger found the trigger.