Walker (In the Company of Snipers #21) - Irish Winters Page 0,52
repeat, we are taking fire. US Marshals are under attack!”
“Sending back up now,” Beau snapped. “How many, Persia?”
She told him what she knew. “Only saw seven, but there may be more. All young men, look like gangbangers. Any TEAM agents within distance?”
“Alex is in the air,” Ember stated loud and clear, her voice steady where Beau’s had been tense. “Sheriff and Medics are in transit.”
Which meant Alex had already been headed this way. Why? Didn’t he trust her?
Straight ahead, the red sedan that had been ahead of the Marshals’ vehicle now lay on its side, smoke billowing from its sky-facing windows. The motorcyclists and construction workers now brandished rifles, pistols, and other weapons. All seven bastards advanced on the TEAM SUV, which had landed sideways after that backward drift, and also, put Zack directly in their line of fire.
Persia scrambled out of the vehicle and into position on the passenger side. She fired a warning shot over the SUV’s hood and over Frank Gibson’s homies’ heads. TEAM protocol demanded it. According to Alex’s rules, these idiots deserved one last chance before she ended them. “Stop, or I’ll shoot!”
Like a pack of in-sync killers, they’d doffed their orange vests and now advanced in matching black wife-beaters and leathers. The macho chicken-shit swagger and all those tattooed faces reminded Persia of another asshole and his gang in a different country.
By then, Zack was out of the vehicle and on his feet, facing the killers down. “US Marshals!” he announced, his pistol on target. Which was true. She and he had been deputized for just this scenario. “Drop your weapons! Do it now!”
When the tough guy on Persia’s far left sneered and jerked his short-stock rifle into his shoulder, Persia crouched and steadied her clenched weapon on the SUV hood. The idiot answered Zack’s demand with a wicked spray of hellfire that spattered the SUV’s grill and spiderwebbed the windshield.
Persia came up shooting. Zack engaged as fervently. Both their weapons of choice were SIG Sauer P226s, and both made quick work exacting law and order.
Too bad Gibson’s homies weren’t trained former military or equipped for the fight they’d started. All the ARs in the world couldn’t stand up to the highly-honed reflexes of battle-hardened warriors, or to Persia and Zack’s combined years of muscle memory training.
For a few seconds, it was all noise, mayhem, quick thinking, shoot-’em-up, and gunsmoke.
While Frank Gibson’s boys kept walking, Persia’s pistol kept talking. Only when the fourth wannabe-hero bit the dust in a dramatic spin, followed by an, ‘I’m dead’ face-plant, did numbers Five, Six, and Seven drop their weapons and raise their hands.
Which sounded just plain pathetic. What’d they expect? To simply stroll up to a federal transport, pop the two well-armed officers inside, then head into the sunset with big brother?
With her weapon still exhaling a steady scent of lovely vaporized gunpowder, Persia stepped away from the TEAM SUV and, with her SIG snapped onto the whiner’s face, bellowed, “Hands up where I can see them!” She would’ve used expletives, but she was still trying to make a good impression on Zack. Maybe score a couple brownie points even while she walked steadily into the body count.
Zack was already there, his pistols pointed on both Five and Seven, both face-down and squirming in the gravel.
“I’ve got the one on your right,” she told her Agent-in-Charge.
“Copy that,” he replied as he roughly cuffed Five and Seven, then stepped back to wait on the Marshals to read their rights.
The Marshals’ van was now safely off-road yards behind the TEAM SUV. One uniformed officer had stayed with their prisoner, while the other approached, his weapon drawn.
“Marshal Goodwin, everyone okay?” Persia asked, as she crouched beside the bleeder long enough to cuff him, roll him over onto his belly, and leave him face-down in the road like his bros.
“Yes, ma’am, but that kid’s Doogie Gibson, Frank’s younger brother,” he told Persia. “Wanna bet four of the others are Andy, Reese, Chip, and Mikey Gibson?”
Doogie twisted around to stare at Persia. His blue eyes were full of tears and his blond hair dripped sweat. Damn, he was just a kid, maybe sixteen, eighteen, tops. “You bitch. You killed my brothers.”
“What’d you expect? You play with fire, you’re gonna get burned. Didn’t your mama teach you that?”
“But Frank’s innocent! He didn’t kill that lying whore and her kids!”
“Then why is she dead, and why did three witnesses finger your brother?” Marshal Goodwin asked, as he