Firepower by John Cutter (ebook reader online .txt) 📕

a ‘Germanic Brethren’ point of its own. I don’t have a when or the target address. He’s being cagey with that.”

“I’ve got to report this as soon as I can…”

“You don’t have to bring my name into it. Let’s do that as little as possible. Just let ’em know it’s planned.”

She nodded. “It doesn’t matter because we’re not going to let anyone do it.”

“I wonder how much he thinks he can really accomplish for his idiotic cause with all this,” Vince murmured. “I mean, it’s not as if—”

He broke off, hearing Wynn Foster and Shaun Adler talking in the hall outside the open door of the little library.

“I don’t know when and I don’t know where,” Wynn was saying. “But we’re doing it. And it’s soon…”

They kept walking past the library. After he was sure they were gone, Vince whispered, “You find out anything?”

“I’m almost there. The guy you just heard saying he doesn’t know? He knows. He’s handling the dark web interface for the whole plan.”

“You’re using feminine wiles?”

“It’s my way into his head,” she said, sighing. “But he’s not going to get lucky.”

Vince smiled. Looking at this strong, admirable woman, crackling with intelligence and energy, he could almost daydream of getting lucky with her himself. But that daydream was something he didn’t allow himself anymore.

Still — was there a sexual tension between him and Deirdre? He kind of thought there was.

“What’s on your mind?” she asked suddenly.

“Me?” He was a little startled. “Nothing — I mean, everything. We need to know where and when and we need to know it soon, Deirdre. We need to be able to get into the emails, the directives, whatever’s going out on the dark web.”

She looked at him with her head cocked and her eyes narrowed, as if unsure of him. “I am still not committing to giving you what I find out. You’re a loose cannon, Bellator.”

“I delivered Stirner to your people. Even though someone should have wrung his neck.”

“Do I want to know how you did it?”

“Probably not. Anyway, you’re stuck with me. I’m here. I’ve still got to get Bobby out of that cell. And whatever they’re planning — I’m not going to let it happen. Just tell me what you can. But I’ll be more help if I know what’s going on. All of it.”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe I should get permission. I’ll be going out after mushrooms tomorrow. I’ll make the call then.”

“We’ve got some night training,” Vince said. “I’d better get out there.”

*

“Yeah, man, they’re installing a minigun on that helicopter,” Shaun Adler said as he and Vince moved into place in the woods. Each carrying an AR-15, they were trudging along in the trees around the range at the foot of the hill, both of them with night-seeing goggles on. The forest was an eerie shade of green and yellow through the night lenses. They could see the other men in their assigned approaches, coming from three directions to converge on the dozens of plywood outlines; silhouettes in the size and shape of men and women, set up in the center of the gun range area. They would converge their fire on the targets, and they were assigned to do it at shooting angles that weren’t directly across from another shooter. That was the theory anyhow. Vince knew it could go badly wrong if someone screwed up.

The whole exercise gave Vince a sick feeling inside. Maybe this was just a rehearsal, but on a certain level, shit was getting real.

Because tonight they were practicing shooting into a crowd of people.

“What kind of minigun?” he asked. A “minigun” was not so mini. It was a very large and deadly serious machine gun. “NATO-style rotary miniguns?”

“Pretty much — an M134! I helped carry it up there — and the tools too. Marco’s up there installing it with Gunny Hansen. Seems Gunny used them back in the Gulf War. They’re having to cut into the deck and do some welding to retrofit that shit in there.”

“That gun is old school. Vietnam era. Still some serious firepower to put on a civilian heli.”

“Sure as hell is…”

The 7.62 x 51mm rotary machine gun was a kind of modern Gatling gun; its six barrels, driven by an electric motor, spun around and fired six-thousand rounds a minute. Devastating firepower…

A weapon like that in the hands of the Germanic Brethren, attached to a helicopter? The thought gave Vince a chill.

They reached their position marked with dayglow spray paint on a tree trunk and aimed their assault weapons. Vince waited for the signal.

A bullhorn voice called out, “Open fire!”

Fifteen men opened fire using three firing trajectories, their select-fire, auto-enabled AR-15s tearing into the wooden replicas. The night echoed with gunfire, an avalanche of racketing sound, muzzle flashes lit up yellow in the night-vision as the men fired and fired, .223 Remington rounds tearing the dummies to splinters…

These sons of bitches have to be stopped, Vince thought. Whatever it takes.

*

At lunch the next day, eating fried chicken and boiled vegetables, Vince glanced up to see Deirdre refilling his coffee cup. “Been to the library lately, Private Bellator?”

“No I have not. Any new books?”

“Yeah. You might want to pop in real quick after lunch. Something good came in.”

She moved on and Shaun, sitting beside him, elbowed him and sniggered. “Dude you are so going to get some!”

“What, in the library?”

“That’s just the start, man. She’s so into you. ‘Something good came in’. Yeah right!”

Vince shook his head. “We’re just studying German together is all it is.”

“That’s how it starts, man.”

“Listen to Mr. Experience here.”

“Hey, you’d be surprised…”

“They get that minigun installed in the heli?”

Shaun nodded, ate a piece of pie, washed it down with some coffee,