The Box by Jeremy Brown (ebook reader play store txt) 📕

“Hey,” just loud enough for the man to hear.

The man turned his head, startled, and frowned at the shape of Bruder’s head leaning around the corner.

He opened his mouth and started to turn his body, bringing the gun around, and as soon as his attention was away from the front of the house Kershaw’s shots came, three of them, knocking the man against the truck and dropping him near the front tire.

They were suppressed but still loud, unmistakable as gunshots, and Bruder moved around the corner with his rifle up, zeroed on the doorway of the counting room.

He got to the front corner and found Kershaw covering the front door and windows of the house, waiting for the fifth man to come out.

Connelly was already moving toward the counting room.

“They’re all over here!” he said. “And watch that one, that door, the machine gun is inside!”

“We know,” Bruder said. “Get back here, get down.”

Connelly turned to say something else and the M249 machine gun—as if it knew they were taking about it—opened up from inside the building, ripping through the sheet metal like a buzzsaw.

Connelly ducked and kept moving toward the counting room and got around the corner near the door.

“Nora, get down! Stay down!”

Bruder knelt next to the dead Romanian, putting the pickup truck’s engine block between him and the gunner.

Kershaw moved up to the Lexus and returned fire, though the man with the M249 didn’t seem to notice.

Bruder got onto his stomach again with his sights on the door of the gunner’s bunker and waited for it to open.

“Front gate, go, go, go,” Kershaw said.

Bruder heard him through the earpiece as well.

Rison came back: “Keep your heads down.”

Kershaw yelled at Connelly, “Down! Down!”

They couldn’t see Rison or the explosive charge labeled with ******4 come over the fence and land on top of the gunner’s nest, but they heard and felt it when Rison pressed the remote.

The door in Bruder’s sights disappeared in a wave of splinters and dust and smoke.

Pieces of roof and concrete fell around and on top of him, and when he stood up a shape stumbled out of the doorway clutching an arm that seemed to be attached by a few threads of a smoldering coat.

Bruder put three rounds into the shape and saw it fall back into the dust.

He pressed the mic.

“Gunner’s down. We have a hole in the fence behind the house.”

Rison said, “Nah, I’m good.”

A moment later they watched him jog toward the gate with two rifles slung across his back—his and Connelly’s—then scale the fence, straddle the barbed wire, and come down the inside without getting hung up.

“Damn,” Kershaw said.

Rison peered into the mess made by the explosives and shook his head, then met Bruder and Kershaw in front of the pickup truck.

“You guys had to cut a hole? Impound lots have better fences than these guys.”

Connelly poked his head around the corner of the counting room building.

“Hey guys.”

Then, toward the counting room door: “Nora! You okay?”

No one answered.

Rison gave the door a wide berth and handed the extra rifle to Connelly, who checked it and said, “Listen up in there. We got four men out here with automatic weapons. You have a few pistols, maybe, and a big ass pack of explosives. Do the smart thing and send Nora out, then we’ll talk about how you guys walk away from this.”

There was no answer for nearly a minute, then Razvan yelled, “Fuck you. You open that door, she dies.”

When Razvan heard what he thought were gunshots he told everyone to shut up and turn off the counting machines.

They did, and Benj and Costel picked up on Razvan’s posture of looking at nothing in particular while he strained to hear what was happening outside.

Nora looked between all of them, trying to interpret this new development while her arms shook from holding the explosives.

Razvan had tried to reassure her, saying there was no way her boyfriend would blow her up, or the money. This was all just an insurance policy to make him behave while they counted the money.

And, because there was no way for her to send a warning, he also showed her the knife he was going to use on Adam to make sure he told them everything.

That was to make her behave.

Get her thinking about the knife being used on her, and how it would be better to just come out with it.

But now something was happening outside.

Benj frowned at the door and said, “Was—”

Then the unmistakable sound of the M249 ripping through a belt of ammunition made them all duck.

“What the fuck?” Benj yelled.

Costel pulled his pistol out of his belt and pointed it at the door.

From outside the door a man—it had to be the boyfriend—yelled, “Nora, get down! Stay down!”

No shots were coming their way, so far, and Razvan was reaching for the door when something very close exploded, impossibly loud, knocking him to the ground and silencing the machine gun.

Now there was just ringing in his ears as he tried to sort out what was happening.

And it was fairly clear.

The whole thing was a setup, and he’d jumped right into it.

Well, sort of.

The good news was, now he wouldn’t need to work to find the thieves.

They’d come right back to him.

He pointed at Nora and told Benj, “Put a gun to her head.”

Then he called Chicago.

When the old voice answered Razvan asked in Romanian, “How long?”

The answer was good news.

Razvan said to the old voice, “Wait, please,” because a man—the boyfriend again—was hollering through the closed door, telling them about the predicament they were in and how they might get out of it.

When he was done, Razvan went back to the phone.

“Give me the direct number to the crew.”

“You don’t need to talk to them,” the old man said. “They talk to me.”

Razvan didn’t have time for it.

“Look, you want your money? Give me the fucking number. Now. The thieves are here, we have them trapped. You’ll only get in the way.”

After a