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

followed his gaze toward the road, where they saw bright LED headlights coming their way, strobing through the tree line.

Bruder asked Rison, “You have number five?”

Rison brought the explosive charge with ******5 written on it and handed it to Bruder along with the remote.

Bruder looked at the clumps of soil and scraps of corn leaf stuck to the bundle.

Rison shrugged again.

“I kinda tossed it away from me before I hit the button on number four. Just in case.”

He looked at Connelly.

“No offense.”

Connelly didn’t notice. He was watching the headlights coming closer, probably seeing them as the end of his chance to get Nora out of that room with Razvan.

Bruder asked Kershaw, “You got the door?”

He nodded along his rifle.

Bruder pointed to the pickup blocking the gate and told Rison, “Move the truck.”

That snapped Connelly out of it.

“No. What? You’re letting them in?”

Bruder and Rison were already jogging to the truck.

“Keys are in it,” Rison said, and started it up and bumped backward over chunks of rubble from the gunner’s bunker.

When he had enough room Bruder swung both sides of the gate open and spent a few seconds studying the mess on the outside of the fence, then dropped the explosives next to a piece of tarpaper with a ragged scrap of plywood still attached.

He and Rison hustled back to the front of the house and got behind the vehicles parked there.

“Door,” Kershaw called out.

Bruder looked over and the door to the counting room was opening.

Nora appeared first.

She had a long, thin arm tucked under her chin like a snake and the satchel of explosives clutched against her chest.

The arm belonged to Razvan, his left, and he followed her through the doorway.

Even with her throat in the crook of his elbow, Razvan’s arm was still long enough to use that hand to press a phone to his ear.

The other hand held a pistol with a fore grip, or extra magazine, hanging down below the barrel.

The gun dug into her ribs hard enough to curve her torso.

Rison and Kershaw and Connelly tracked him with their rifles and Connelly said, “Stop. Gun down and move away from her.”

Razvan ignored him and spoke Romanian into the phone.

His eyes glittered in their sockets and he grinned out at Bruder and the others.

“What a long day, eh boys? You can relax now, it’s done. It’s over.”

He moved out of the doorway so the other two men could get past. They tried to aim their pistols at everyone at once, and the one Bruder recognized from Nora’s shed approached Connelly with one hand out.

“Give me the rifle.”

“Stop right there,” Connelly said.

“Come on, asshole. Look, you see those headlights? That’s your doom.”

After a few seconds of looking around, Razvan’s eyes landed on Bruder and stayed there.

He called across the lot, “You’re the boss. I can tell. The only one not bothering to point a weapon at us. The General.”

Bruder checked the headlights, coming up on the tree line now, and didn’t answer.

“The cavalry,” Razvan said, gesturing with the phone as well. “They want to have you drawn and quartered. You know what that means?”

“Claudiu didn’t mention that one,” Bruder said.

The smile fell off Razvan’s face, but his eyes still glittered back in their pits.

He stared at Bruder but spoke for everyone to hear.

“The boss will get what’s coming to him. The rest of you fucking thieves, put your guns down and behave, and I’ll give you quick deaths. After you watch him die.”

“Let Nora go first,” Connelly said.

Razvan sneered at him and nuzzled his chin across the top of Nora’s head.

“We’re way past that, boyfriend. It was never going to happen anyway. You were both dead the moment you arrived. You were all dead the moment you touched my money.”

He stretched tall, unconcerned in his moment of victory about exposing himself to the rifles, which were now dipping toward the ground as the vehicle rolled into the reach of security lights and became a blacked-out Suburban.

It slowed for the turn into the driveway and tried to weave around the larger bits of concrete and metal.

“Welcome to Iowa,” Razvan said into the phone, and Bruder hit the remote.

The explosives lifted the back end of the Suburban off the ground, making it look like a bucking horse for a second, and blew the windows out and doors open.

Bruder and his crew were ready for it, though it still made them flinch.

Razvan and his men were not, and they ducked and twisted and spent too much time trying to figure out what happened.

In that time, the rifles came back up.

Kershaw put five fast rounds into the big Romanian, who fell face-down into the stones.

Rison shot the one reaching for Connelly’s gun twice, center mass, and once more in the head as he sagged.

Connelly dove for the gun in Razvan’s hand and Razvan, who probably had time to shoot Nora, panicked and brought the pistol toward Connelly and fired as Connelly dropped away from the barrel and yanked the wrist down with him.

Bruder shot Razvan once under the right collarbone, then again, just below the first shot, when Nora spun away.

Razvan’s head was there the whole time, floating like a balloon above Nora, but Bruder didn’t want to risk a miss.

Connelly pulled the gun out of Razvan’s limp hand and tossed it away, then shoved the Romanian in the chest to speed his collapse against the wall next to the counting room door.

Kershaw kept his rifle pointed at Razvan and said, “You hit?”

“I’m fine,” Connelly said, and rushed to Nora.

Rison glanced at Bruder to make sure he was good, and said, “Looks like we’re all keeping our blood inside today.”

Then he looked at the smoking Suburban with its doors hanging open like loose teeth.

“Them, not so much.”

“Come on,” Kershaw said, and he and Rison went to see if any more work needed to be done.

Bruder walked over to Connelly and Nora and pried them apart to get at the satchel.

“Gimme that,” he said, and took the explosives from