P Deutermann - Darkside

Jim stopped, because he saw the look spreading across Booth’s face. The kid’s hand was trembling ever so slightly. Jim tried to remember how many rounds that gun carried. Not that many, not like the nines everybody carried today. He also remembered that the thing was impossibly heavy, even for someone of Booth’s heft. Seven rounds, that was it.

“C’mon, Mr. Booth. Send that pissant back down the hall before he craps and makes the place smell really bad.”

Booth grinned at that and nodded. There was a gleam in the kid’s eyes now that hadn’t been there before. Drugs? Meth? Where was the SWAT team? How would he know when they had Julie? Then he realized something: They might manage to get a line on Julie, but they couldn’t move her until Booth opened that window. Based on what he could see of the extended shade, she was hanging by her knees, literally.

“Get out of here, you fucking worm,” Booth said, waving the gun at Robbins. “Slide on back down the passageway, the way you came. Only now you’ll slide better, all wet like that. Move it, asswipe!”

Robbins didn’t hesitate. He started to get up, but Booth aimed the gun right at his head, and the dant subsided with a squeak. He began to inch his way backward, literally leaving a trail on the polished linoleum. When he’d gone fifty feet back, he turned around, still crawling, and went on hands and knees like a frantic turtle until he disappeared around the corner.

Booth backed into his room, checking to see that the shade was still in place on the window. Then he sat down again, facing Jim.

“So you figured this deal out, huh?” he said. “That why you’re here? You wanna watch?”

“I figured this has been coming for some time, Booth. That you knew you’d probably never make it out of here. I mean, after Dell, there’s been too much heat. And all that shit down in the tunnels? But you nearly succeeded, you know.”

“Yeah. They were gonna sweep it, weren’t they? Until that NCIS bitch got in the way.”

“She’s pushy, I’ll say that,” Jim said, trying to keep it going. Then he saw a shadow flick past the tan shade behind Booth. All right. They were on the roof and they were doing something to retrieve Markham. “So why the hell did you even come here? You don’t believe in any of this honor stuff. You hold the whole program in contempt. You came from nothing. What were you thinking?”

“A full boat to a degree and a commission. What else, man? That’s what everybody here came in for.”

“Not me, Booth. I believed all that stuff about duty, honor, country.”

“Nobody believes that shit, Jim. All we have to do is watch how the Dark Side behaves. Hell, they knew the Dell thing wasn’t right, but they were willing to hold sweepers on it.”

Another shadow. Keep it going. “And you wanted to be a Marine?”

“Damn straight. At least the Marines are up-front about what they’re all about. Shock troops. Stone killers. Kill a Commie for mommy. The light green machine. Pure. Simple. Hell, you know.”

“I know you’d have never made it through Quantico, that’s what I know.”

“The fuck you mean? Look at me, man. I could eat all that platoon commander shit up for breakfast.”

Jim realized that he was approaching the break point here. He needed to get Booth angry enough so that the guy focused exclusively on him, but without getting himself shot. The TAC team could listen to him talking, and hopefully know when to move. “Wrong, Booth, because the Corps’s always on the lookout for psychos like you. For sick puppies who like to dress up and paint their faces. Who get young boys to do nasty things. They’d Section-Eight your ass in a heartbeat.”

“Fuck that noise, man. Nobody here got wise. Why would they catch on now?”

“Because the Marines are the real deal, Booth. The grunts might fancy themselves Hollywood stone killers, but they expect their officers to have some personal standards beyond being physically fit. They’d catch on to you on the first day in the barracks. Hell, troops’d see you do that thing with your teeth and know you were bent.”

“So how come I got through four years here, huh, smart guy?”

“Because they weren’t looking, Booth. That’s the problem when the Navy does social engineering instead of maintaining their standards. I still don’t understand how a whacko like you even got in.”

Booth laughed that nasty laugh again, waving the big pistol around. “Blame it on the nuns, man. They wanted to score an Academy appointment. I was the only dude in the school who could do the math at the eight hundred SAT level.” He turned in his chair to check the bulge under the window shade, then turned back just as another shadow flicked across the shade.

“So what’s the plan, Stan?” Booth asked. “You gonna make a scene, try to keep me from doing what I have to do?”

“Nope,” Jim said. “Markham lied to us from day one. Between you and me, she shouldn’t graduate, either. I assume you’re gonna open the window, drop her ass on the bricks, and then do the right thing?”

“Not quite, smart guy. Julie’s just window dressing, so to speak. But you know, since I’ve got nothing to lose, why not take your ass with me?”

“Because you only have one round left, Booth. Like I said, I’m not going to interfere. Although there may be SWAT snipers up on the seventh wing waiting for you to check the window shade. But me? I’m your testimonial, Booth. I’m going to be the only one knows how you stood up and did it like a man. Because otherwise, the Dark Side here is going to tell a very different story, right?”

Booth looked at him for a long moment. He had the gun pointed in Jim’s general direction. He’s probably counting rounds, Jim thought. At that moment, Booth twitched his right wrist and the magazine dropped out of the. 45; with his left hand, he jammed a new one into the weapon so quickly that Jim almost couldn’t even see it happen. He watched Booth rack the slide back and chamber a fresh round, ejecting the lone remaining round into the room.

“Guess what, Jim?” He said. “Got lots of rounds left now.”

Jim shook his head in wonder. “I have to admit, that was the fastest combat reload I’ve ever seen, Booth. You must have been practicing.” As in, Hello, TAC squad. He’s back in business.

“Betcher ass I practiced. And now,” he said slowly, leveling the big gun at Jim again. “Now I think we’ll see how much of a man you are, Mr. See-cure-it-tee.” Aiming carefully, he fired once, blasting one past Jim’s right ear, so close that he could feel it. The window behind him exploded in a rain of glass. Jim hadn’t moved, not because he was brave, but because it had happened so fast.

“Well, that was close,” Jim said, letting the listeners know he was still alive. And now would be a great time to make your move, guys, he thought.

Booth nodded approvingly and fired again, this time past the other ear. More glass. Jim began to sweat. He tried to calculate how quickly he could duck down behind the desk. Dyle fired again, the shock wave hurting Jim’s ears as the round raised the hair on the top of his head and whacked into the wall behind him, ricocheting around inside the plaster after it hit the granite facade outside.

At that instant, a small dark shape crashed through the window behind Booth, followed by another. There was a blinding flash and a huge booming explosion, at which point Jim submarined in his chair, dropping out of sight behind the steel desk even as another round came howling right through the back of the chair he’d been sitting in, knocking it over. There was a second huge blast from the room across the way as a second flash-bang let go, and then a third. Then a rattling noise, followed by another big blast, but this one out in the passageway, then a howl of pain from the room where the Yard cop had been hiding. Silence ensued, punctuated only by noises from the roof. Jim was barely able to hear anything except the ringing in his ears. The entire area was full of smoke. As he very carefully peered around the corner of the desk, shapes in blue jumpsuits appeared out of the smoky gloom across the way, pointing guns at everything, including Jim. Then he thought he heard a couple of shots way down the hall, and another window’s worth of glass crashed into a room. As Jim, still behind the desk, got to his feet, hands in full view, the roar of the . 45 came booming down the hallway, dropping the TAC guys to the deck en masse while bullets whacked all around them.