Chapter 122: My Hand Slipped
"CONTACT!"
A scream from the gangsters in the middle of the deal echoed through the garage. As both parties spun around to look, three rockets slammed into the crowd, sending everyone diving for cover.
"BOOM!"
The expected ball of fire never came, but instead of explosions, the three rockets released a massive cloud of chemical powder that engulfed the crew. Hobbs's former partner Phil had already slipped out of the garage during the chaos.
"Ron! Phil's in the wind!" Hobbs reported over comms while firing blind into the smoke.
"Go get him, I'll mop up here," Ron ordered immediately. "And take your rookie with you so I don't accidentally ventilate him."
"Copy, watch your six," Hobbs, knowing Ron's capabilities, didn't waste words. He grabbed Kevin by the scruff of his neck and hauled him out of the garage like a bag of groceries.
Once Hobbs confirmed his departure over the radio, Ron used the smoke screen as cover to relocate from his firing position to a new concrete pillar. He chuckled, "Finally! Time to take the gloves off. You scumbags ready to meet your maker?"
It wasn't that Ron didn't want to waste the terrorists caught in the chemical cloud, but the smoke that confused them also screwed with his line of sight.
Of course, these weren't amateur hour thugs. Apart from the two unlucky bastards who caught lead from Ron and Hobbs in the opening seconds, the rest had smartly rolled behind the nearest cover.
When the smoke cleared, the terrorists cautiously peeked out with their weapons ready, but saw nothing except empty cars scattered throughout the garage.
What the hell!
Ron checked the terrorists' positions using a car's side mirror, then suddenly popped up from behind the pillar and quick-drew his Smith & Wesson .500 Magnum like something straight out of a Clint Eastwood flick.
"BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG!"
The heads of five targeted terrorists exploded like watermelons at a shooting gallery, the massive slugs turning their skulls into pink mist.
"There he is!"
The remaining terrorists, not about to go quietly, immediately returned fire with everything they had. Ron quickly ducked back behind his pillar as automatic weapon fire chewed chunks out of the concrete.
Son of a bitch! They've got full-auto!
Ron ejected the spent cylinder, dumped the five empty casings, and speed-loaded five fresh rounds. The well-trained hostiles, following their squad leader's hand signals, began flanking from both sides.
An ordinary person would've been screwed in this situation, but Ron was anything but ordinary.
Ron glanced at his Rolex, silently calculating the distance to the advancing terrorists: "Five, four, three, two, one..."
"BOOM!"
Ron flicked the detonator switch, triggering the innocuous little package he'd casually stuck to the wall when he'd first taken position behind the pillar. A massive fireball, packed with roughly 700 steel ball bearings, instantly shredded the advancing terrorist squad.
When the flames died down, nothing remained but unrecognizable chunks of meat.
Those were his best operators! The terrorist leader, seeing red, shouted to his flanking team, "Hold position! These bastards are packing Claymores!"
But his warning came too late. Ron wasn't giving them any breathing room. The moment the second squad hit his kill zone, he pressed the button again.
"BOOM!" Another devastating explosion wiped out the flanking team completely.
Including the two poor bastards who'd caught bullets at the start, the leader was down to just three men - exactly enough to fill Ron's five-shot cylinder with one round to spare.
Ron stepped out from behind the pillar again.
"BANG! BANG!" Two shots rang out, and the two men scanning nervously for targets dropped like sacks of cement, leaving behind headless corpses.
Ron's marksmanship was still razor-sharp.
"We surrender! Let us walk, and I'll make you rich!" the terrorist leader, rattled by Ron's deadly accuracy, shouted from behind a sedan.
"Rich? How rich we talking?" Ron sounded intrigued.
"Name your price! How about ten million? Ten million American dollars!" Sensing an opening, the leader kept sweetening the pot.
To show good faith, he tossed his sidearm out from behind the car, but quietly used his boot to drag over an assault rifle from one of his dead operators. He caught his remaining man's eye and pulled the pin on a frag grenade, waiting for Ron to get close enough for a surprise party.
"That's serious money. How you planning to pay? Wire transfer or cash?" Ron's voice seemed to come from the same spot.
The leader judged the distance and lobbed the grenade toward Ron's position. "Here's your payment! Say hi to Uncle Sam for me!"
"BOOM!"
The leader and his last man simultaneously broke cover, hosing down Ron's position with two assault rifles on full-auto. "Rat-tat-tat-tat..."
"What the hell?" When the smoke cleared, the leader didn't see Ron's mangled corpse like he'd expected. Only a destroyed boom box remained - the exact same model any CIA agent from that morning would've recognized as Ron's signature taunt.
God only knew how many of those speakers Ron had stockpiled in his gear stash.
"Where'd that son of a bitch go?"
"BANG!" Before the leader finished his sentence, his last man's head exploded like a piñata. The still-warm barrel of Ron's hand cannon pressed against the back of his skull. "I checked with the big guy upstairs, and he says your credit's no good. Why don't you go have that conversation with him face-to-face?"
Behind the gun barrel, Ron's incredibly friendly smile appeared - but to the terrorist, it looked more terrifying than anything out of a Stephen King novel.
"Don't shoot! I'll give you anything you want! I swear on my mother's grave! Please don't pull that trigger!" With Ron's cannon pressed against his brain pan, the leader immediately assumed the textbook surrender position.
"Tsk, what a letdown! I thought you'd play hard-to-get a little longer, maybe try to disarm me and go a few rounds mano-a-mano. You ever watch action movies? That's how they do it in Hollywood!"
It's over already? Ron, disappointed, tapped the leader's skull with his barrel.
"FREEZE!" Suddenly, a sharp-dressed woman in a federal suit emerged from the stairwell, drawing down on both Ron and his captive. "As of right now, he's a CIA asset. I need you to transfer custody immediately. Appreciate your cooperation."
The CIA wants to muscle in on my action? Ron smirked internally, but his trigger finger twitched ever so slightly.
"BANG!"
Before the leader could even process what was happening, his head, rattled by the massive .500 Magnum slug, splattered across the garage floor like chunky salsa. Ron, completely unfazed by the federal agent's weapon pointed at him, shrugged apologetically.
"Oops. My bad - hand slipped."
(End of chapter)
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