Chapter 6: Doing the Stations
The rocket-propelled grenade slammed into the arch of the front door. All security glass was reduced to glitter. The door frame was ripped from the concrete, hurling it into the station. The two officers in front were instantly killed. One had been decapitated by the RPG as it shot past. The other one was blown in half.
Inside the station, the shock wave ripped through the front desk, the waiting area, and the bullpen. The glass dividers that separated the officers were blasted out. The relatively new vending machine went flying and crashed through a wall.
Half a dozen cops were killed instantly. None of the two dozen civilians in the front lobby, waiting for everything as varied as parking tickets and copies of police reports, to waiting for their lawyer, survived the first explosion.
The white panel van across the street didn’t hesitate. Both side doors had been opened for the RPG to fire without turning the inside of the van into a crematorium. The one who fired the RPG tossed it aside and picked up a machine gun as the driver backed up half a block, put it in gear, then charged for the front door. They tried to plow through the line of cop cars parked on the sidewalk at right angles to the precinct. One of the cars was the one that Alex and I used on a daily basis. The impact with the white panel van caused our car to explode. It blew the white van back, off of its front wheels, and onto the roof, like a turtle flipped onto its shell.
However, that explosion was powerful enough to create a wide gap in the line of cars. That was good enough for the next car to speed in, charging for the gap in the front door. It sped in, smashing though what was left of the front desk, and through a divider separating the bull pen from the offices.
The gunman burst out of the car, spraying the surrounding area with bullets, even though everyone who was still alive was on the floor, and they were shooting at hip-height.
The gunmen were dressed in “street gang casual,” in leather jackets... even though it was the middle of July ... in wife beater T-shirts, and some wore no shirts at all. All of them, however, were covered in tattoos, from their scalps to the ankles. Which was standard for life-long members of MS-13.
Meanwhile, I was upstairs with Statler, Waldorf, and Alex. The explosion rocked the building, and we were all thrown from our chairs. We weren’t going to get any paperwork done today.
I pushed to my feet and rushed for the door. “Come on.”
I was running down the hall, past Alex. He was already on his feet, gun drawn. My Browning Hi-Powered was already in the evidence locker. Thankfully, I still had my 9mm service weapon.
Then I heard the automatic fire and considered that I might need a bigger gun.
I charged downstairs anyway. The automatic fire was still on the first floor. Other cops went behind me, into the basement, where we kept the armory. No one was dumb enough to try to engage automatic weapons just in uniform. Even the Kevlar vests we’re given aren’t enough to take that type of punishment.
Then I noticed that the MS-13 shooters were firing from the hip, barely looking where they fired. The three on my side of the car had their back to the three on the other side of the car, and vice versa. They were firing on full automatic, partially to keep everyone’s head down. The few cops left on the first floor were firing as much as they could.
In short, they weren’t looking. They were also functionally deaf. They relied on the chaos to keep everyone off balance.
I slipped through the partially open door, walking low and fast. I moved along the back of the wall, using desks to break line of sight. I stopped in front of the car’s bumper. I was to the left side of the shooters on the passenger side of the car. I was to the side of all of them.
I popped up just enough to aim. I took aim at the driver’s side shooters, since fewer cops were giving them trouble on that side.
I opened fire.
The first bullet hit the driver in the ear. His head snapped to one side, throwing him into the gunman next to him. The second gunman cursed and spun, knocking his fallen comrade off of him. He was still angry when I fired three more times in a Mozambique drill—two bullets to the chest, one to the head. He fell right back into the third gunman on the driver’s side. I didn’t even have the chance to open fire on the last one, since he was caught by one of the cops he’d been shooting at.
I redirected my fire to the passenger side ... just in time for the nearest one to turn and see me.
Oh darn.
I fired reflexively, without aiming.
The bullet caught the AK-47 in the muzzle. I don’t mean it struck the barrel, or the sight. It struck the muzzle, corking the opening. It was a 9mm being slamming into a 7.62 mm opening with the force of a few thousand feet per second. It jammed in the barrel through the force of the pressure.
The gunman fired.
If you’ve ever seen what happens when a cartoon character jams a finger into a pistol, the effects were similar. The explosion ruined his hands, split the barrel, and smashed gun shrapnel into his lower body like a fragmentation grenade.
I frowned. Thank you, God.
The next two gunmen turned as their partner fell. It was enough of a distraction for the remaining cops to gun them down.
I knew we weren’t out of the woods just yet. There were still gunmen outside who were probably on their way inside. I holstered my pistol and ran forward. The car wasn’t locked, so I swung in and popped the trunk.
In the trunk was what I was looking for: guns. Lots of guns. Including several grenades.
I looked around. Packard came out the stairwell door. I pondered a moment what had taken him so long. I hadn’t realized that it had only been seconds since I came out of the stairwell myself.
“Alex!” I called. “You used to play baseball, right?”
“Yeah?”
I raised one of the grenades. “How’s your fastball?”
The MS-13 troops closed in on the front entrance. The first wave had a six-man formation.
The first man to die was the third man in the formation. He died not from a gunshot, or an explosion, but from a grenade, fast-balled into his face. The metal pineapple killed him on impact.
His buddy kept his eyes on the goal, straight ahead. He stepped around his fallen comrade. In all of the commotion and gunfire, he didn’t realize what had felled his buddy.
None of them knew what killed them.
With the nearest gunmen cleared, the remaining cops and I moved to what was left of the entrance, spraying cover fire for Alex. He threw the next three grenades in rapid succession, clearing out the gunman to the left and the right flanks of our attackers. The resulting explosions caused even more panic. They also drove the gunmen to the center of their line of attack, clumping together...
Making them an easier target.
Alex threw four grenades this time, one right after the other. We were bowling for gangstas, and Alex threw a perfect game.
Alex tossed two more grenades than needed. All it did was make new potholes in the street. But it was Queens, who would notice?
An explosion then ripped through the back door. I whipped around. The frontal attack was a diversion. I dashed forward, stepping on the trunk of the car in the middle of the bullpen. I jumped onto the roof, then the hood, and ran to the back hallway.
I slammed into the gunmen coming out of the back hallway. We all went down in a pile of limbs and ammo. At point-blank range, I fired randomly, one bullet per attacker, and circled back, firing again. I emptied the magazine, then started swatting them with the empty gun.
After a minute of thrashing around, Alex grabbed me by the shoulder and pulled me off the pile of gunmen. “Down, butch. I think you got them.”
I blinked. I had taken them all out of the fight.
I slumped.
“This gets better and better,” I gasped.
A rack of a shotgun filled the eerie post-battle silence.
Alex and I looked over our shoulders. Sergeant Mary Russell stood behind us, shotgun pointed directly at us. She racked it and took aim.
“Sorry, guys,” she said softly. “I have bills to pay.”
I grabbed Alex and swung him around, hoping to shield him with my body. If I absorbed enough pellets, Alex could open fire and drop her before she could kill him. I slammed Alex against the wall and slammed my own side right next to him, creating as tight a seal as possible so he wouldn’t even be scratched.
Two blasts went off at the same time, turning into one large boom.
I hesitated for a moment. I felt nothing.
I moved away from the wall, turning around to where Russell had been a moment before. Instead of the Sergeant, there was McNally and Horowitz, guns drawn. The two older men had revolvers.
Mary Russell, who I had considered my friend, was dead on the floor.
The IA guys lowered their guns and sighed.
McNally shook his head. “We haven’t had to pull our guns in—”
“Decades,” Horowitz concluded. “The bad old days.”
I winced. How long had these two been on the force? There’s old (for a cop), and then there’s old.
McNally holstered his weapon. His wrist beeped, and he looked at his wristwatch/heart monitor. “Damn it. My heart rate is up. My doctor is going to kill me.”