Page 10 of Resuscitation
Chapter Eight
“Connor!”
Mercer dropped to his knees, staring down at his brother, whose face was getting paler by the second. “Fuck, no, no, no!” he stuttered.
That bastard Watts had caught Connor with a bullet just below the vest.
This was bad.
Mercer looked up at Brick, who stood by the safe room door, looking stunned. “Jeez, that was a lucky shot,” Brick muttered.
“We gotta get him to a hospital,” Mercer said urgently. He called to his other men standing outside the door to the closet-sized room. “Make a stretcher, help me get him to the van.”
Brick came to his senses and rushed out, taking charge of the men.
Mercer dug a bandana from his coat pocket, used it to apply pressure. Connor groaned. “It’s gonna be okay bro, it’s…” Mercer started, then realized Connor was pushing something into his hand and looked to see his little brother’s bloody hand pressing the jewels into his palm.
“I got ‘em, bro,” Connor croaked.
Mercer was tempted, so tempted. But the rubies represented Connor’s future as much as his own. Positioning his body so none of the men could see, he took the jewels, carefully buttoning them into Connor’s chest pocket. “You keep them safe for us both,” he whispered.
The blood kept coming, pooling on the floor, and Mercer had no choice but to press harder against the wound. Connor cried out, his face growing pale, appearing ghostly in the NVGs. Mercer wished he could spare a hand and the time to find a freakin’ light switch, but he couldn’t let up for a moment.
“We’re gonna get you help, okay, bro, listen to me,” Mercer whispered. “Hey, look at me! You gonna live, no dying on me! You understand?”
Connor, tears welling up in his eyes from the pain, squeezed his eyes closed. “No…no dying,” he gasped. Connor grabbed his brother’s sleeve with weak fingers. “Don’t…let me…die.”
“You ain’t dying!” Mercer vowed.
Brick, Harper, and Leon lifted Connor onto a door they’d taken off its hinges. Connor groaned and cried out in pain again.
“Careful, careful,” Mercer ordered. He turned to the other crew members, Mark and Tyson. “Clear a path through that crap down there. Go!”
Getting Connor through the maze of piled up junk and out of the mansion into the back of the van seemed to take forever, but they made it.
“Hey, boss, don’t mean to cut to the chase, but you got what you came for?” Brick asked as Mercer hopped into the driver’s seat while the others cared for Connor in the rear. He tried to sound casual, but Mercer wasn’t fooled.
“Yeah, I got them. Now tell me the fastest fucking way to a hospital.”
“Eastfork,” Brick replied from the passenger seat, squinting at his phone map app. “Eastfork Medical Center.”
Mercer drove as fast down the unplowed drive as he could in the terrible conditions, but every bump caused Connor to howl in pain. As they pulled onto the two-lane road, headlights approached them.
“That’s a goddamn security guard,” Brick muttered. “Talk about bad luck.”
The security vehicle flashed its lights and half turned in the narrow road, completely blocking their way.
“Goddamn it,” Mercer’s growled under his breath. He turned his head and shouted to the rest of the crew. “We’ve company. Hold tight!”
Mercer tensed his grip on the steering wheel and picked up speed. The van hit the rear quarter panel of the security car with a loud crack. Then Mercer revved the engine, forcing the smaller vehicle into a culvert along the side of the road.
Mercer sped up again and glanced over his shoulder to the back of the van. “How’s Connor doing?”
Tyson looked up with a grimace, his hands firmly pressed on Connor’s wound. “I dunno, man. He don’t look good. We gotta get to this hospital quick.”
Mercer sped as best he could on the treacherous, slushy surface, finally turning onto a plowed four-lane highway.
At last, a chance to pick up speed. Still, the windshield wipers struggled to clear the relentless snowfall, making the headlights nearly useless and visibility limited to a few feet beyond the van’s hood.
In the rearview, a blue flashing caught Mercer’s attention. “Dammit.”
“What is it?” Brick asked.
“Looks like we got some local pigs on our ass. Alright, everyone, weapons ready. Tyson, stay with my brother, you got that?”
“No problem, Alpha,” came the reply.
The sound of the automatic rifles, handguns and MP5s getting checked and reloaded filled the van interior.
Through the blizzard, a sign warning of a narrow, two-lane bridge ahead came into view.
Mercer gripped the wheel hard against the buffeting wind, his eyes darting to the rearview and the State Police vehicle in pursuit.
The vehicle gained on them rapidly. They were in the wrong vehicle for this shit.
More distant lights in the rearview. More cops.
Mercer shouted at Brick. “Get ‘em off our ass!”
As the nearest police cruiser moved to try and get past them before the lanes reduced to two, Brick rolled down the passenger side window, leaned out with his rifle, and sprayed the police car with bullets.
The pursuit vehicle braked, hitting a patch of ice before completely losing control and slamming hood-first into a snowbank.
Mercer nodded with approval, but their small victory was short-lived. Suddenly, the headlights revealed a State Police cruiser ahead of them, blocking the entrance to the two-lane bridge.
Ramming them was the only option. “Hold on!” he shouted as he accelerated hard.
The statie’s lights started flashing, and two troopers jumped out, drawing their sidearms. One cop fired, but the van was closing in on them too quickly.
The front of the van smashed into the first cop with a heavy thump and sent him flying into the air.
Mercer swerved and smashed into the cruiser, spinning both vehicles into a skid.
The cruiser crashed into the bridge abutment, while Mercer desperately tried to control his fishtailing vehicle and avoid the obstacles on the side of the road.
A sudden jolt sent shockwaves through his bones, his stomach lurching as the van hit something and stopped moving.
“Fuck!” someone shouted.
Connor screamed in agony.
As Mercer came to his senses, he realized the engine had died, but the headlights remained on, illuminating a cluster of trees along the roadside.
They’d spun a one-eighty, now facing back the way they had come, at an angle.
Blurred red and blue flashing from more approaching law enforcement vehicles grew brighter through the swirling blizzard.
Mercer killed the van lights. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he noticed movement in his door mirror—the second trooper struggling to regain his footing in the deep snow.
Mercer reached for his Glock and slipped out of the vehicle, an icy wind hitting his face like a harsh slap.
The trooper had disappeared behind the crashed cruiser where he was probably calling for backup or grabbing more weapons.
Either way, he had to die—or else Mercer and the van would be caught in a crossfire when the other cops arrived.
“Dammit.” Mercer banged on the side of the van. “Everyone out except you, Tyson, stay with Connor,” he commanded. “Take positions and keep in radio contact. We got cops, at least two cars coming down the road. Harper, try and get this piece of shit started.”
The rear doors flung open. Four of the men filed out and fanned across the road into concealed positions where the road narrowed from four lanes to two.
“Protect the van,” Mercer ordered. “I’ll get the trooper.”
Tyson stayed with Connor in the back while Harper tried to get the engine going, but as Mercer stalked after the cop, all he heard was the sound of an engine turning but refusing to spark to life.
As he approached the rear of the cruiser in a stoop, Mercer held his weapon in both hands.
Even with night vision, he couldn’t see jack-shit in the storm.
He moved across the narrow bridge to the end of the barrier wall and stopped, focusing on the location of his last sighting of the cop.
Seeing no movement, except the blur of snowfall, he continued past the cruiser and into the tree line along the river bank.
He took slow steps, swinging his weapon’s barrel left and right, until he heard a distinct crack and caught sight of a figure moving fast through the brush.
Mercer fired twice at the blur, and the figure dropped.
“Gotcha,” he cried, triumphantly. He hurried to the spot, his boots crunching in the thick snow, and looked down at the uniformed State Police officer staring lifelessly up into the sky, two wounds in his chest, including one directly over his heart.
From the bridge, the muffled crack of gunfire from MP5 bursts cut through the howling wind.
Mercer hurried back to the van. Two county sheriff cars had come to a halt about twenty yards away.
His men were engaging from either side of the road, the deputies taking cover behind their vehicles and returning fire.
Mercer poked his head into the rear of the van.
Harper turned around from the driver’s seat. “Ain’t starting, Alpha. Just won’t go.”
“Shit! Help the others.”
“How the fuck are we getting out of here?” Tyson asked.
“We’ll get out of here,” Mercer replied sternly. Then louder for the sake of Connor, he said, “Hang in there! Ya hear me?”
A faint moan slipped from Connor’s lips.
Mercer looked at Tyson. A hard look that telegraphed exactly what would happen to the man if he didn’t obey. “Stay with him. I’ll be right back.”
He grabbed two new magazines for his rifle and exited the way he had come in, through the back doors.
He sprinted in a crouch over to the left tree line and crept through the woods, out of sight from the police vehicles.
His heart pounded as his adrenaline picked up, the cracking of gunfire adding to his buzz.
He wondered if he should have brought Harper or one of the others with him as support.
Too late. No, he was good. This felt good.
The howling wind and blizzard conditions easily covered his approach.
When he reached a spot parallel to the police vehicles and cops firing back at his men, he found himself in a perfect location.
Snow-covered bushes provided cover with a clear view of the targets.
He assessed the targets through his NGV’s. Four cops, two behind each vehicle.
No, five.
One still inside a county sheriff’s SUV parked farther back, radioing for back-up.
Shit. Need to move fast on this one.
“Alpha to Squad,” he whispered into his radio, “go, go, go!”
As Mercer moved toward the rear vehicle, on his flank he saw Leon burst from cover, sprinting forward in a low crouch, while Brick and Mark laid down suppressing fire.
Leon shouted, “Set!”
From the other side of the road—now in the cops’ blind spot—Brick exploded into motion. “Flash out!”
As the flash popped in an explosion of light, Mercer removed his NVGs, then took aim with his rifle at the cop who was farthest back from the rest. He fired once but missed.
Shit!
He’d underestimated the wind, which was stronger than he’d thought. The cop realized and turned in his direction, bringing her pistol to bear on him.
Mercer was quicker. He fired and hit the target this time, dropping the officer.
Shouts of alarm broke through the wind as Mercer’s men engaged the remaining cops. Now that he’d out-flanked them, it was easy pickings. He sighted his next target and hit the officer in the neck and head. The man fell to the ground.
His partner, on the other side of their vehicle, fired at one of Mercer’s approaching men, hitting her target. The black-clad figure fell onto the snow with a grunt of pain.
Mercer moved in and fired point-blank, killing the officer immediately with a callous pop to the head. Another body hit the ground.
The remaining two cops huddled behind the last cruiser. An MP5 opened up, smashing the car’s windshield and ripping the tires to shreds. Mercer crouched low and used the chaos to maneuver around behind the cops and fired.
And then it was over. The gunfire stopped, leaving only the blizzard’s howling wind.
“Get Connor into the SUV,” Mercer shouted over the radio.
Soon, they were all crowded inside the vehicle, Connor draped over the back seat, no longer speaking but able to squeeze Mercer’s hand when he checked on him.
“What about Mark?” Brick asked as they drove past a man on the ground clutching his leg next to a dead cop.
“Got no more room,” Mercer replied coldly, revving the engine. “Find me another route to the hospital.” The SUV accelerated down the road.
Brick pulled up the map and showed him. Mercer found the buttons that turned the police lights and siren on—now no one could stop him from saving Connor.