The Suppressor by Erik Carter (good books to read for beginners .txt) 📕

The truck was black. The trailer was green with GARRISON POWER TOOLS emblazoned down the side in tall, white block letters.

In the alley, doors flew open on each of the two cars ahead, and the Farone men poured out, guns in hand, darting for the parking lot.

Instantly, the alley erupted with gunfire. Flashes from the upper floors of the buildings on either side. CRACKS reverberating off the walls.

Two of the men were struck and collapsed to the ground. The others return fire to the windows as they dove back into the relative safety of their cars.

“Back out!” Jake screamed.

Charlie, panicked now, grabbed the shift knob.

A bullet tore through the windshield.

Charlie’s head fell back to the seat. Eyes open. A line of blood snaked from his forehead to his nose.

Chapter Twenty

Tanner grabbed the armrest on the door as the SWAT truck clipped the corner of a curb, and a jolt of energy struck him like an electric shock. He lifted out of his seat.

The truck flew toward the alley on the opposite side of the street that fronted the abandoned school parking lot.

Flashes of muzzle flare lit the alley. The CRACKS carried over the distance, audible even through the thick construction of the armored truck. Shots came from the second-floor and from the trio of cars below, a firefight, an ambush with the poor souls in the cars pinned in a crossfire.

Tanner looked to the mirror bolted on the outside of his door.

Behind, a second SWAT vehicle swerved to the right, going for the semi-truck parked in the center of the otherwise abandoned school parking lot.

THWACK!

A round glanced off the roof of the truck. Shouts from the men in the bench seats in the back.

Ahead, the flashes of gunshots ceased. Both groups of men—those in the buildings and those trapped in the vehicles—were criminals and sensed the threat of the oncoming police raid.

Hispanic men flooded from the buildings’ exits, three from each side, all with firearms, some taking potshots at the SWAT truck and the men in the cars. One man held a MAC-10 at waist height, stabilizing it by a suppressor, and sprayed a burst of rounds into the first Farone vehicle. The windshield exploded, shattering into a crystalline latticework, and blood splattered it from the inside.

With the front vehicle immobilized, the middle car was pinned and the only operational vehicle was an old Ford Taurus at the rear. A man was motionless behind the steering wheel, mouth open, a rivulet of blood running down his face from a hole in his forehead.

And beside him, crouched low beneath the dash, was Jake.

The SWAT truck came to a screeching halt. Tanner threw the door open, exited, took cover behind the door, both hands on his weapon.

SWAT team members flooded out of the back of the vehicle and stormed the alley in a single-file line, a snake. The situation they were running into was a logistical shitshow, and tactics quickly turned into chaos.

Shouted commands. A flurry of arrests, men thrown to the ground, both Rojas and Farones. Others slipped away into the night, cops in pursuit.

Tanner proceeded along the wall. Pace appeared behind him, nodded.

The gunshots subsided. The firefight was quickly dying off. Scumbags had a tendency to run when the cops showed up. Go figure.

Tanner and Pace inched toward the corner of the building, and Tanner squinted through the smoke and debris at his objective—the Taurus in the back.

There was Jake.

Sprawled across the center console, trying to free the dead driver from his seatbelt.

Tanner turned to Pace. “There he is. Let’s get our man outta here.”

They advanced toward the car, weapons aimed.

“Freeze, Hudson!” Tanner shouted.

Jake looked up, spotted them.

He made eye contact with Tanner.

And he shook his head.

There was something serious in Jake’s eyes, even more serious than the situation surrounding them. Tanner knew him well enough to know that something was wrong.

Something was about to happen.

He wasn’t going to let them take him in.

Jake continued to shake his head, and he shouted, “No!” though Tanner couldn’t hear it.

Pace turned to Tanner. “What the hell is Rowe doing?”

CRACK!

A piercing sound. Debris fell on Tanner’s head, bouncing off his helmet.

The shot had come from the second floor of the far building. A remaining Roja man, one who hadn’t fled like the others. He held a Ruger AC556 Carbine—a nasty piece of work, a full-auto hell-bringer.

The Rojas had come fully prepared to slaughter the Farones.

After pushing Tanner and Pace back, the Roja man swung the rifle to his left.

Bringing it in line with the Taurus at the back of the alley.

Chapter Twenty-One

Jake fumbled with Charlie’s body as he tried to push it out of the car. He periodically ducked beneath the dash as bullets punched through the sheet metal. Glances out the windshield showed Tanner and the FBI agent, Pace, approaching fast, guns drawn.

Another glance. Tanner was screaming.

He gave Charlie’s body another tug. It wouldn’t move. One of Charlie’s dead hands clenched the steering wheel.

He grabbed Charlie’s wrist, pulled.

A bullet struck the door, shattering the window.

Jake crouched again as glass rained down.

He glanced up.

Tanner and Pace were almost upon the car, close enough now that he could discern their screaming.

“Pete Hudson, step away from the vehicle!” Tanner said.

The fed leveled his pistol. “Hands up, asshole!”

Jake took hold of Charlie’s hand again, yanked hard, breaking its grip on the steering wheel. He threw the body out the door. It rolled once, coming to a halt face up.

Charlie’s open, blood-splattered eyes stared into the dark sky, still showing a bit of that saddened, betrayed expression he’d worn just before the bullet crashed through the windshield.

Jake’s mind flashed to the recent events in New Orleans that had indirectly caused this. He owed Charlie his life after what happened in Louisiana.

And now he was abandoning his dead body in an alley.

“I’m sorry, Charlie.”

He slammed the door shut.

A bullet struck the front quarter panel, a large round from a high-powered rifle. The piercing metallic shriek made his ears ring.

Staying low, beneath the horizon of the windshield,