Private Dublin

Chapter 12

Sal crouched low and approached Officer Stotter’s vehicle. The engine purred ominously as he closed in, arms outstretched, pistol raised. I stayed back, unarmed, conscious of the fact the gunman might be lying across the front seats. Salvatore got an angle on the interior.

“Clear,” he said, before leaning through the driver’s door and popping the trunk.

He moved round the back of the vehicle and lifted the lid to reveal a semi-auto shotgun in the trunk-space locking mount. He unlocked the quick release and handed me the gun along with a box of shells.

“For use in self-defense only,” he told me.

The Benelli M4 tactical shotgun came with a pistol grip and was a reliable weapon that carried six shells. I checked the gun was fully loaded and emptied the box of twenty-five further shells into my pockets, splitting them between the side pockets of my tux.

The surrounding buildings were all occupied apart from one warehouse directly left of the patrol car, which looked empty and derelict. A demolition notice was pinned to the gates, and a strip of the mesh fencing had been torn open at some point in the past and curled back through regular use by intruders. The warehouse beyond was covered in graffiti and peppered with broken windows. A late-twentieth-century build, it was a large, functional place that stood three stories high. A lot of places to hide in there.

“Should we wait?” I asked, feeling more confident with a gun in my hands.

The sirens weren’t far off.

“He might slip out the back,” Sal replied, before speaking into his phone. “Winston, we’re outside of a warehouse on Kittridge Street. Suspect has fled into the building on foot. Tell dispatch to notify responding units. We are going into the building after him.”

“Copy that,” Winston replied. “We’re no more than three minutes out. We’ll have your back.”

Sal pocketed his phone and started toward the hole in the fence.

“Quickly and quietly, sweep the place,” he said. “Check the exits. Make sure he hasn’t escaped.”

I nodded and followed him through the fence. We double-timed it across the disused parking lot and were about sixty feet from the main entrance when the yard erupted with the crackle of gunfire.

Sal went down almost instantly, caught by the shooter, who was using a sub machine gun to shell us from a second-floor window. I replied with my shotgun, knowing it had little chance of doing serious harm at that range, but it was noisy, and few people could stand tall in the face of a semi-automatic at any distance.

My gamble worked. The shooter backed away from the window. I kept firing as I rushed toward Sal, who was on his back, moaning.

I grabbed his pistol, which had fallen a few feet from him, and fired a brace of shots at the window. The FN 509 carried seventeen rounds in its magazine, so I used it to tell the shooter I had a more accurate short-range weapon.

“You okay?” I asked Sal.

I could see he wasn’t. His right arm had been shredded, and an unknown number of bullets had pierced his abdomen. Blood was spreading rapidly across his shirt front. I saw the shooter back in the window and fired the pistol again, unleashing another pair of bullets to send the man cowering away.

I dropped the shotgun, grabbed Sal by his good arm and dragged him with my left hand, while laying covering fire with my right. My shots weren’t accurate, but they shattered what remained of the window and did exactly what I’d intended, scaring the shooter off.

I pulled Sal back through the fence and dragged him behind the patrol car. I found a fresh clip in his holster and reloaded the pistol. Staying alert to danger, I put the detective in the recovery position and used his belt to tie a tourniquet around his mangled arm. I spoke to him constantly, encouraging him to hold on while we waited for help, which, judging by the incoming scream of sirens, was only seconds away.