Devon Ford - The Fall

Peeking out, he saw the back of one of the shooters as he took cover behind a car up ahead, easily within accurate range of his Glock. He closed his eyes momentarily and stood.

He leveled his weapon, aiming for center mass, but couldn’t pull the trigger. Despite the crazy events, he couldn’t just execute a man in cold blood.

“NYPD, put your weapons on the ground, NOW!” he called out, sounding less authoritative than he intended. The shooter did not comply. Simultaneously spinning and dropping to the ground, a burst of gunfire erupted over Jake’s head and missed him by a hand’s breadth. His own answering shots, two solid hits to the chest, dropped the shooter.

He moved forward, eyes scanning ahead in fear of the second gunman. Taking a knee beside his suspect, he switched the Glock to a one-handed grip and put two fingers to the throat of the man. He felt warm skin, smooth where it should be stubbled, and glanced down. He saw two eyes wide open, not in death but alert. His own shock had no time to register this, even though body armor was something that he should’ve anticipated, and a reflected flash sparkled in front of his eye as a knife came toward him.

He had no time to disengage and use his sidearm. Had no time to issue a warning or use any of the disarming techniques he had been taught. Instead he acted instinctively, smashing the butt of his gun down on the face beside his knee. The crunch of bone sickened him, as did the sticky, metallic smell of the hot liquid on his hand, but the knife dropped with a clang to the street.

A shout ahead, too close for comfort, made his eyes snap up and into the fat, bulbous barrel of a stubby rifle aimed at him. Jake closed his eyes, and waited for oblivion.

Major Taylor and his team had secured the White House along with all the senior members of staff. The president was livid, threatening each and every man with the death penalty for treason. Taylor was worried that he would start to have a negative effect on the moral of his troops, so he isolated him under the guard of two if his most trusted men.

Taylor acted confidently, but he did not feel at all confident. The longer their secret siege went on, the higher the risks of failure were. By now, events in New York were on schedule, and already the impact on the world financial market was huge. They were crippling their own country, albeit temporarily, but they did what they did for the greater good and the long-term prosperity of their beloved United States of America.

“Major, this is Johnson. Over,” came the squelch from his earpiece on their closed squad-net radio.

“Go,” came the terse response.

“Sir, the president would like to speak with you at your earliest convenience,” Johnson, an implacable if somewhat unthinking sergeant under his command, told him. It was one of the reasons he chose Johnson; he was efficient and ruthless, but lacked that extra layer of consciousness which would ever make the man question an order.

“On my way. Out,” replied Taylor. His intention was not to upset or injure the president in any way, and his orders were specific; the president was to be treated with the respect due his office. They needed him to legitimize their coup and to be the face of the new direction their country was heading in, whether he liked it or not. Demonstrating that they could reduce one of the biggest cities in on the continent, in the world in fact, to chaos, was a sharp axe to hold over a man’s neck.

Taylor stalked into the luxurious suite of rooms which had been turned into an isolation cell, nodded to Johnson and the other soldier, dismissing them.

“Sir,” he said, saluting, “you wanted to see me?” The man in front of him, red-faced as though the anger he was holding in would not stay shuttered up for long, regarded him.

“Taylor,” he said acidly, not so much remembering the man as reading his name from the uniform shirt, “just how long do you think this little charade will go on?” he asked him, taking the same approach as when they had first spoken.

“Sir, we need to keep you safe until morning. Then you can talk to my commanding officer—” Taylor said before being savagely cut off.

“ I am your goddamned commanding officer, you son of a bitch,” the president snarled at him through bared teeth. “You’ve heard the term ‘Commander in Chief,’ have you not?”

“Yes, sir, I have,” Taylor said, still stood to attention and showing the respect the man’s position demanded, even if he had no respect for the man himself. He said nothing more, but turned and left the room offering another nod to the soldiers outside the door.

“This is treason , goddammit!” erupted the resident at his retreating back.

“Nobody in or out, and you have my permission to restrain him if he gets outta line,” he told Johnson. “Just don’t leave any visible injuries,” he added as he walked away, thinking of the press conference the president would be holding the following day.

Jake closed his eyes, knowing he was about to die. The gunshot he heard didn’t sound right, nor did he feel any pain or impact from the bullet. A second and third shot rang out, interspersed with the rapid coughing sound of the weapon aimed at him. Only with the absence of his painful death did it occur to Jake that the unsuppressed shots could not have come from the silenced assault rifle which had promised his death only a second before. His brain eventually registered that the shots sounded just like those from his own gun, and he only opened an eye when the sound of a body slumping to the street made him jolt.

The shooter, slightly bigger than the first but dressed in dark clothing carrying a similar backpack, lay dead in front of him. Clearly dead, unlike the one he had shot, because he hadn’t shot his suspect in the face and left a gruesome hole where the nose had been. Just as he reached out an instinctive hand to check for a pulse, an autonomous reaction he made in shock as missing a part of your brain to a bullet nearly always resulted in death, another sound grabbed his attention.

“Motherf-uuuugh…” came a hissing grunt from in the street.

Rising back into action, Jake scanned the street and laid eyes on his worst nightmare. He threw himself down next to a man dressed as he was, of roughly the same age, and in obvious agony.

“Where are you hit?” Jake asked as he tried to roll the cop onto his back to see the wound.

“Groin,” the man growled through gritted teeth and eyes screwed tightly shut, “and in the vest.”

Jake pulled up his uniform shirt to see that the shooter’s burst had raked across at gut level and the rounds had caught the bottom of his vest, but one lucky round had dropped and impacted low on his hip.

“Keep pressure on it,” Jake told him, as the man opened one eye to look at him.

“One-Three?” he gasped, seeing the metal badges on Jake’s uniform collar. “The hell are you doing up here?” he asked, meaning that he wouldn’t often see a member of the 13 thprecinct in his native One-Seven.

“Chased the shooters,” he told him, adding, “one killed, one unconscious.”

“Good,” gasped the wounded cop.

“Look, we need to get you inside and get a bus,” Jake told him, not knowing how he would do that when there was no cell coverage, no phone lines, and no radio to use to call for an ambulance. “Secure them,” the cop said, fluttering a weak hand toward the shooters. Jake glanced in that direction, and only saw one.

“Fuck!” he cursed aloud, releasing the pressure on the bullet wound and drawing his gun again. He stalked three paces forwards, seeing the one he had bashed in the face crawling on the sidewalk. No warnings, no verbal commands to comply, Jake stepped over and kicked the shooter full in the ribs before dropping a knee into his back and hauling hands to his back where he applied the cuffs far tighter than he would with any normal suspect. The gasp which came from under the ski mask gave him pause, and he pulled it off to see the angry, defiant, and bloodied face of a woman. Before he could say anything, she spat at him, and tried to flip on her back to use her feet as weapons. Jake stepped quickly back and raised his gun at her.