Chapter 10

We went back to attacking the Carnoli family's main source of revenue, the protection racket. Our scheme had worked so well up to now that we just stuck with it, on the principle of "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

This chase was not as long as some we had been in, so we were not expecting to net as much loot, but a hit was a hit. This was back to the small warehouse style building for a collection point. This time there was plenty of cover behind the warehouse. Shit, could it be that the Carnolis were even more stupid than we thought? This much cover for our car was almost too good to be true. I couldn't help wondering if we were being set up for a trap.

Yep, it was a trap, alright. Carol was the first to open her door, and this act was met by a hail of bullets. Fortunately, all of the shooting was of the spray and pray variety, so Carol was not hit, though the inside of her door did spring a few bullet dings and marks. The shooters were using 9mm Uzis, just as we were, so there was not much real damage that they could do to our crossover, except to ruin the external finish.

They must have seen us following them and cellphoned ahead to have the ambush set up when we arrived. I was preparing to make our getaway when a large SUV was pulled across the alley in front of us, and another pulled in behind. Man, we were trapped! How lucky could we be? We opened the firing ports in our windows and returned fire.

The attackers could see us in the windows and shot at the apparently open targets. How stupid did they think that we were? The little bullets mostly just bounced off the tough polycarbonate, though a few did hang in place in the small dents that they made. We fired, and they fired. We fired, and they fired. This could go on forever, or, at least until we ran out of ammunition. That was not going to happen for a while, but it would eventually become a problem.

This kind of back and forth, nonproductive shooting went on for about 15 minutes. That's when Carol volunteered to do something very brave. Our vehicle had a small emergency escape door in the back floor panel similar to what tanks and APCs (Armored Personnel Carriers) have. Carol volunteered to wiggle through the small trap door and try to flank our attackers.

We tried to talk her out of it, but she insisted. Hell, we had to admit that she was right. Somebody was going to have to do it, and her small size made her the logical choice. Bill and Gail gave in before I did, but I finally made it unanimous. Carol released the catch and slithered out onto the ground under the vehicle. We had already agreed that she would work to our left, since that seemed to be the more lightly manned side. If she could break the stalemate, we could slip out and probably make quick work of our opponents. We couldn't tell about them, but we were all equipped with nightvision goggles, so we could see who we were shooting at.

Carol was gone in a remarkably short time. I really had not thought that a 52 year old woman could move that fast, but the exercise routine that Bill had us all doing seemed to be a big help. In less than five minutes after she left, there was the CRACK of a .45, quickly followed by another one. Obviously, Carol was not using her Uzi. I wondered why, but I was in no position to argue with her. The problem with that was that it told the more astute members of the opposing gang that we had help from behind them.

The opposing Uzi fire had stopped, and we waited for something else to happen. Then it did! There were three more quick shots from the .45, and then the sound of several Uzis firing. The noise paused, and then we heard the frantic chatter of a single Uzi. We had no idea what that meant, but we hoped it was coming from Carol. A moment later, there was the reassuring sound of the .45 again.

By this time, we had started bailing out of our car to go to Carol's aid. The best thing that could happen was for Carol to chastise us for not having enough confidence in her. We found her sitting on the ground and leaning against a tree trunk. She was figuratively beaten to death. Her uniform was in ribbons and her armor was full of small bullet holes. The fools who had been shooting at her had never considered that she would be wearing body armor, so they had concentrated on firing at her torso. Well, that much impact would hurt, but it had no way to penetrate the quality of armor that Carol was wearing.

On the other hand, none of the men shooting at her were wearing body armor, so she had no trouble putting them down once she hit them. She had assumed that they would be wearing body armor, and that was why she had been using her .45 so much. At every opportunity, we were going to call her "Two Gun," because she had carried her .45 in her right hand and her Uzi in her left hand, and she simply shot off the one that seemed the most appropriate. She had fired six shots from her .45, and she had brought down four of the bad guys with those six shots—not something one would expect from a little old lady from Sola Vista! She had also taken care of two men with her Uzi when she was too busy to reload her .45.

Most of this we got from Carol later over coffee, because we still had some enemies to eliminate. There were six down, but we had no idea how many more there were to go. It seemed likely that Carol had accounted for all of the enemy on this side of the crossover, but there were three other sides to the vehicle that had not been cleared.

Carol caught her breath very quickly and reloaded her two guns. She insisted on following me as I went after the SUV blocking our rear while Bill and Gail took care of the one blocking our front. What the hell, I could hardly argue with the hero of the day, so I waved her on.

There did not seem to be much opposition at the rear SUV. Two men were crouching down behind the vehicle's rear bumper and looking damned scared. Carol and I worked our way behind them and fired our Uzis at the same time. Scratch two thugs! About that same time, we heard the tail-end of some Uzi fire at the other SUV, so we figured that our friends had taken care of their assignment.

The only thing left at this point was to the right of our car. We had not heard any shooting from that general area since we had bailed out of our car, so we were not sure that anyone was left for us to shoot at. Carol and I made our careful way among the trees on that side of the alley and found no sign of combatants. The warehouse was on that side, so we waited for Gail and Bill to join us before we went to see what we could find there.

We were careful in our approach, following Gail's directions all of the way. We were not shot at as we approached, so we did not know what to expect when we went inside the warehouse. We checked and found that this door was locked. Gail unlocked it for us, but we did not enter until she and Carol went around to guard against escapes by way of the front of the building. They were going to wait outside until they heard shooting, then they would storm their side of the building and enter. This was a precaution to try to make sure that we did not shoot at each other by mistake.

Bill was with me because he had much more experience than I at urban warfare, and I needed his guidance. My kind of police work didn't often lead to this type of situation. We gave the women 10 minutes to get into position before we pushed the door open. This resulted in a hail of bullets directed in our general direction.

I expect there were several Uzi barrels ruined that night by the crooks firing so much and so often that the barrels radically overheated. We might get to that stage, too, but it would be a while, yet. There was enough room around the door that Bill was able to lay down a covering fire from high in the doorway while I crawled on the floor to some packing cases where I could be shielded while firing to cover his entrance into the warehouse. Fortunately for us, the crooks all ducked for cover whenever one of us began shooting.

I quickly found a position and began shooting to provide the cover that Bill needed. He moved faster than I did and quickly joined me at my position. Just as I began firing, I saw a door open at the other end of the building, and the two women came in. We now had the crooks in a crossfire, so we put them down in short order. That was when we made a very pleasant discovery, pleasant for us, anyway.

We checked to see who was still alive among the crooks and we found only one. He was hiding under a couple of other bodies, and I would probably have missed him. However, Gail found him and pulled him out. He had been shot in the shoulder and the left knee, but he was not in any way close to dying. Who should we discover, but Jimmy Carnoli, the last remaining brother of the three siblings that we had been hunting?