Tracking Shot by Colin Campbell (i can read book club .txt) 📗

The leader pointed at the targets pinned around the walls. “Well we can shoot. So leave this to us.”

McNulty looked at the targets. Some of the groupings were terrible. “Not all of you, according to that one.”

The skinny guy nodded at Billy Bob. “My brother can take out a rat’s eye at a hundred paces. Traffic cameras at a thousand.” He indicated the other two men. “Them too.” He raised his eyebrows. “Me. I can’t shoot for shit.”

He patted the shotgun. “Can’t miss with this baby. If I get close.” He nodded toward the front door. “Them guys out there. They’re gonna want to come in sooner or later. They’ll be close enough then.”

McNulty glanced around the room at the ragtag army that was planning to go up against the military professionals. He looked at the leader. “You’ll need somebody to drive then.”

The skinny guy checked his load then looked at McNulty. His eyes carried the weight of the world as he shook his head. “You know as well as I do, the minute that car comes off the ramp they’re gonna blast it to smithereens. There ain’t no getting out of this. Some movies don’t have happy endings.”

They both knew what movies he was talking about and McNulty realized what he was going to do. The suicidal dash. The long walk into a hail of gunfire. If he was lucky he might take one of the gunmen with him but they were too good for him to get two. Targeted shooting. Center mass. Those guys were going to close down the Cloverleaf Boys and it was all McNulty’s fault. He’d forced their hands by coming here. The plan had changed. Instead of killing them afterward, they couldn’t risk them talking to McNulty, so they had to go now. McNulty as well. His shoulders sagged.

“I brought them here, didn’t I?”

The skinny guy got to his knees. “No. I brought them here. You just speeded things up.” He nodded to Billy Bob. “Drive straight.”

Billy Bob came over to his brother. “No.”

He waved at the other two and tossed them the car keys. Nobody spoke. There was nothing else to say. They exchanged parting glances and went through the bedroom to the back door. Billy Bob knelt beside the front window. His elder brother moved to the front door. He looked over his shoulder at McNulty. “It’s all gonna happen here and the workshop. Go out the back and turn right. We’ll keep ‘em busy. You stop Mickey Mouse.”

He smiled at his brother and Billy Bob nodded. Billy Bob knelt up and fired through the window. The leader got to his feet and went out the front door.

FORTY-FIVE

The back wall of the cabin was so close to the concrete support that the door could only open halfway, forcing McNulty to go left before he could close it behind himself and turn around to go right. Keeping low in case of stray bullets, he crept along the narrow gap, listening to the gunfire out front. He couldn’t see what happened, but the sounds spoke for themselves. His mind filled in the rest and played it like a movie in his head.

Billy Bob fired aimlessly to give his brother some cover. Rapid shots across the damaged cars, still parked up against the porch railing like horses at a hitching post. The skinny guy fired the shotgun from the hip. He blew out the windshield of the nearest car and sent splinters up the side of the first gunman’s face. The other two gunmen turned and fired, center mass, punching three ribs and his spine out through his back. He was still firing the shotgun as he went down.

Billy Bob stood up and roared. He fired at the man with the splinters in his face, getting off three shots before the other two exploded his chest with a double-tap each. Splinter Face took one in the body armor, one in the shoulder and a third in the neck. It was the neck shot that killed him, ripping his aorta and spraying blood across the car.

The workshop doors burst open as the car reversed off the ramp at speed. The direction was off and it rammed into one of their own cars in front of the hitching post. There wasn’t even time to raise their rifles before the two remaining gunmen calmly stepped up to the car and shot them through the windshield. It was all over in thirty seconds. There were no final headshots to finish the Cloverleaf Boys. They were already dead.

Thirty seconds. Just enough time for McNulty to realize he was fucked.

He reached the rear corner of the cabin with the gunshots still echoing around the clearing. The concrete support extended way beyond the cabin and out into the open. If he tried to reach the end and head for the freeway he’d be a sitting duck. His car was all the way across the turnaround and out the other end of the junkyard halfway up the on-ramp. Too far under hostile fire.

The gunshots echoed down to nothing. Hot metal ticked and cooled. Steam hissed from busted radiators. The remaining gunmen didn’t speak. They’d shot and killed five men in a little more than two minutes. Five men wasn’t enough. There was a sixth. McNulty. The scene wouldn’t be secure until they’d killed the sixth man. They didn’t speak. They didn’t check their fallen colleague. They spread out and approached the cabin from two sides, leaving McNulty nowhere to go.

Except for one place.

If he moved fast.

McNulty darted round the side of the cabin before the gunmen were fully deployed. He dropped to his knees and lifted the wooden hatch just enough to roll through the gap. He didn’t even think about the rotting corpses as he dropped into darkness. The lid was down on top of him by the time the right flank came around the front of the