Glen Tate - 299 Days - The Visitors

Between the woman’s speed running toward him and Grant’s jamming her with the end of his rifle, the serrated flash hider was thrust about a half an inch into her chest. The force of the collision actually hurt Grant’s right wrist, which was on the pistol grip of his AR. He almost fell backwards from the force.

The woman crumpled up and started to fall backwards. The end of Grant’s rifle was stuck in her, so when she fell, Grant’s rifle started to come out of his hands. He yanked it back and it came out of her chest. Pretty easily, actually. It hadn’t gone in too far.

Blood squirted, but not nearly as much as when he’d shot the looters. There had been gallons of blood then. There were just a couple of spoonfuls on her and his rifle.

Grant regained his balance when he yanked the AR back. His feet had been planted far apart in a wide stance, just like they’d practiced, although they had never practiced lunging the end of a rifle into someone. They had never even thought of it. Grant just did that naturally; a reflex. He was in a fight. He’d been in those before.

Grant remembered the time he had to take the dog chain off his dog and use it as an improvised weapon when his dad was chasing him. Jamming the end of the rifle in her chest was just like that dog chain: a hastily improvised weapon in a fight. He just made it up as he went. He was in a fight. He didn’t think about stuff. He just fought.

The woman was on the ground now, lying in the doorway between the kitchen and the rest of the house, coiled up and moaning. For the first time, Grant viewed her as a human being. She had been a threat coming at him before. A thing. In motion. Trying to kill him. Not a person. Now, she was a person. A poor, helpless, unarmed, pathetic wounded person.

Grant’s first impulse was to drop to the floor and try to help her. Right as he started to, he regained his sense. This house was full of who knows how many bad guys who wanted to kill him and the Team. This was no time for helping that woman. Besides, Grant instantly realized, her bleeding wasn’t too bad.

Grant kept sweeping the doorway with his AR. No one else was coming—right that second, which was the time frame he was thinking in. One second. Then the next second. There was no flow to time. It was a series of one-second snap shots.

Grant heard Wes screaming at someone. “Get down! Get down!” Then silence. There was no sound in the house. For the first time in…the five seconds or so since the first person had come out the back door.

The Team hadn’t really practiced room clearing on the range. They had to use imaginary rooms with lines drawn in the dirt representing walls and doors. It wasn’t too realistic.

Besides, Grant had always thought, what are the odds that a lawyer would need to learn how to clear a room, even if he was pretty sure the United States would be collapsing in a year or two? So, he did what he’d seen on TV. He yelled, “Kitchen clear!” He heard others yelling “Bedroom clear!” and other rooms clear.

Wes yelled, “Got one in the bedroom!”

A prisoner or a body? Grant wondered.

Rich yelled, “One dead in the front room!” Grant froze. Was the dead one of the Team?

“Dead bad guy!” Pow yelled. Thank God.

Grant yelled “Wounded in the kitchen!” He realized that they might think he was wounded and he didn’t want them to leave a person they were covering and come running in so he yelled, “Wounded woman in the kitchen!”

Grant remembered Bobby and Scotty outside and the girl and woman running around out there. He pointed his head out the back door so Bobby and Scotty could hear him.

“Go get the girl and woman,” Grant yelled to them. “Don’t let them leave!” Then he realized that bad guys could come from any direction so he yelled, “One of you cover the backyard!” He heard Bobby and Scotty yelling instructions to each other.

It was still quiet. Strangely quiet. The woman in the doorway was moaning a little. It seemed like she had the wind knocked out of her with Grant’s flash-hider lunge.

From what Grant could piece together, Wes was covering a prisoner and Pow, Rich, and Ryan had shot someone. Grant finally realized he was able to move throughout the house because the person he was covering was unarmed and wounded, so he went through the first doorway, stepping over the crumbled woman in her underwear.

He was terrified to go through a door anticipating there might be someone ready to shoot him. He realized that Wes might be thinking the same thing and mistake Grant for a threat.

So, just like they’d practiced, Grant yelled, “Moving!”

Wes yelled back, “Move,” meaning that he and everyone else knew that Grant would be moving.

Grant went into two rooms. He expected to be shot each time. People naturally close their eyes when they expect some kind of impact, and getting shot counts as an impact. You need your eyes open, Grant remembered Special Forces Ted saying. Grant realized his eyes were closed for a millisecond and forced himself to open them.

The first room he went into was a bathroom. He burst into the room with his eyes open, forcing himself to keep them open.

This sucked. It was way harder than he ever could have imagined. Grant was realizing the professionals would do this much better, but the professionals were busy right then so it was up to the Team. The “constables,” Grant corrected himself.

The bathroom was a mess, but didn’t have anyone in it. Grant felt a surge of relief. The shower curtain was open so no one could be hiding in the shower. He yelled, “Bathroom clear!”

He went down the hall with his AR shouldered and ready to fire. Everything he saw was through his red-dot sight. He knew that a bullet would go precisely where that red dot was. He went to the door of the next room, pointing his rifle into the room and starting to go around the corner, exposing himself as he did. He got all the way into the doorway of that room, which looked like the girl’s bedroom. No one seemed to be in there. Grant checked the closet. No one.

Then Grant noticed a man’s jeans on the floor.

Oh God. Not that. That explained why the little girl ran out of the house naked. Oh God.

“Bedroom clear!” Grant yelled.

He heard Ryan yell, “Moving!”

Grant and Wes yelled back “Move!”

Grant heard Ryan going through the house. Ryan yelled, “Clear,” after each room.

Grant didn’t know whether he should also be clearing rooms, standing in the hallway, or just staying in the bedroom where he wouldn’t get in anyone’s way and wouldn’t accidentally be shot by the Team. Maybe it was cowardice, but Grant decided to stay put in the bedroom. He thought he’d at least get some bearing on where people were. For the first time during the raid, Grant stopped moving and just thought. For a total of about two seconds, which seemed like forever.

It was weird: Grant desperately wanted to know exactly where his guys were. Not just so he could coordinate with him; he had this intense urge to know that his guys were nearby. They were like a security blanket. He needed to know he was not off on his own. He needed his guys around.

“Where you at, Wes?” Grant yelled, realizing that he sounded scared.

“Here!” Wes yelled, sounding scared, too. Grant could tell from the direction of the sound that Wes was a room or two away to the right.

“Got it,” Grant said. He could have said “Roger,” but they weren’t a real SWAT team or military unit. They were just some guys who managed to not get killed. So far.

It took Ryan a minute or so to clear the other rooms. He wasn’t in a rush; he’d done this before, albeit in huts in Afghanistan. He would hate to miss something and have a bad guy pop up, but that minute seemed like hours. Everything had moved so incredibly quickly, and now it was dragging on.