A Safe House

50

Stone rapped on the table for attention. “Listen to me,” he said.

Everybody quieted down. “When that van gets here, and we’re all armed, we have to be careful what weapons we choose. Ken, what’s in the van?”

“Heckler & Koch light machine guns, assault rifles, riot guns — they’re 12-gauge shotguns with 24½-inch barrels, typically used by police for riot control, and 9mm Beretta semiautomatic pistols, the standard sidearms for U.S. troops. Also, several thousand rounds of ammo, to cover all the types.”

“What kind of shotgun shells?”

“Buckshot and birdshot, number nine.”

“All right. We can’t get into a firefight using hard ammo: we’d be firing live rounds into houses, and there’s a private school across the road called the Frederick Gunn School. We’d have a lot of collateral damage, and nobody’s going to be interested in why.”

“What do you suggest?” Ken asked.

“I say we use the riot guns with birdshot loads, the lightest weapons we have. They’ll make lots of noise, but they’re not going to penetrate the walls of buildings some distance away and kill the inhabitants.”

“That makes sense,” Ken said.

“Do you think Wallace will be so restrained?” Jenna asked. “My guess is he won’t be as discriminating as you are. He’ll use whatever he can get his hands on, and I bet that will mean assault weapons.”

“We can’t let ourselves be responsible for Slade’s bad decisions,” Stone replied. “We’re going to have to be able to prove to whatever police turn up that we were acting in self-defense and not trying to kill anybody. Also, when we fire, we should fire at their feet, so that we don’t blow anybody away. Cripple them, but don’t kill them. If somebody takes a round of birdshot in his shin, he’s not going to be thinking about killing us after that.”

“Let’s not be overcautious while they’re firing hard rounds at us,” Eggers said.

“Overcautious is exactly what we have to be,” Stone said. “Ken, is there any body armor in that van?”

“A dozen suits,” he replied. “None of them small enough for Jenna.”

“She can wear baggy armor if it will save her life. Speaking of the van, where the hell is it?”

Ken peered out a window. “Coming down Kirby Road,” he said, “and fast.”

“Do you see any opposition yet?”

Ken checked again, this time with binoculars. “No.”

“Then let’s get that van unloaded, but only shotguns and birdshot. Leave the heavy stuff for the cops to discover when they search the van — all they’ll find is proof of our benign intentions.”

“Line up,” Ken said. “Let’s do a kind of bucket brigade. I’ll choose the weapons. The rest of you just hand them into the kitchen.”

Ken went out to meet the van and motioned it as close to the front door as he could get it. It stopped, and Ken opened the sliding doors, barking orders at the men inside. Ten minutes later there was a pile of weapons and ammo on the entrance hall floor, and people were figuring out how to wear the body armor.

“I was wrong,” Ken said, holding up a suit. “We have one woman-sized suit.” He helped Jenna into it.

Stone looked out the window and saw three vans turn onto their street. “Here they come,” he said. “And remember, don’t let anybody get behind the house. We don’t have enough people to defend the whole perimeter, we just want to scare them off. And don’t shoot out their tires; that would slow them in running away.”

“Can you use this?” Ken asked, holding up a bullhorn.

“Perfect,” Stone said. “They can’t misunderstand our intentions if we’re shouting at them for the neighbors to hear.”

Ken ran out the door, and Stone watched as he locked up the van and returned to the house. “We don’t want them to use our own weapons against us,” he said.

They watched as Wallace Slade got out of a van and marched to about fifty feet from the house, holding an assault rifle in one hand and his own bullhorn in the other.

“You in there!” he roared over the bullhorn. “Come out of there with your hands up and face the people’s justice!”

Stone aimed a round about three feet short of Slade’s feet and fired. The pellets ricocheted into his ankles, and he did a little dance for them, using a lot of language that Bible students would be unaccustomed to hearing.

“Get out of here, Wallace!” Stone shouted over his bullhorn, “and take those innocent people with you, before you get them hurt!”

Wallace dropped his assault weapon and bullhorn and limped as fast as he could back toward his van. The door opened and he dove inside, then, to Stone’s surprise, all three vans made U-turns and sped back up the street.

“Do you think they’ll be back?” Stone asked.

“If they do come back,” Jenna said, “Wallace won’t be leading them.”