Chapter 18

Finally, it was Friday and they were ready for their big attack on the restaurant. They used their newly repainted truck for transportation. Mavis drove and Nancy rode shotgun. The other nine rebels were in the truck box. Vents had been cut so that air could get into the truck; otherwise, it would quickly have become too hot, even at night.

The two M14s had been successfully converted for selective-fire, and George and Otto had practiced enough to be able to control the muzzle rise as they shot up to five rounds at fully automatic. It was a fight, even for those strong men, and a woman probably could not have handled the forces involved. They were having enough trouble with their Mausers and Berettas. Everybody had at least 40 rounds, so they had what they figured they needed, short of a pitched battle. They were looking forward to killing a lot of cops, but they didn't want to get into a long drawn out battle that would eventually overwhelm them.

The troops were sent to their positions in readiness for the assault. George, Nancy, and Lena took the front door. Otto, Helen, and Mavis took the back door. Joseph and Irene took one emergency exit, and Sue, Jack, and Ima took the other one. They had planned on the front door taking the heaviest load, and the back door would be next. They got the heaviest firepower with the M14s and their potential for automatic fire.

The two emergency exits were figured to get less business, so Joseph was the only fully experienced fighter covering them. They were in sight of each other, so he could supervise his group and the other one if the need came up.

The festivities opened with Otto throwing the first Molotov Cocktail. Otto had the strongest and most accurate throwing arm, so he was selected as the purveyor of fire. Precisely at 9:30 PM, he heaved the first bottle. His aim was perfect and the bottle broke upon impact. The 400ml of toluene flashed up and began to run down the gentle slope of the roof. Whatever plastic was used for the artificial grass didn't flame up, but it did burn as long as it was in contact with the burning toluene. Otto saw immediately that he was going to have to throw a hell of a lot of bottles to set the building on fire if he concentrated on burning a hole in the roof. The manufacturer of the artificial grass could be proud of herself, since it was doing its job quite well.

Otto changed his point of aim and threw the next bottle against the wooden wall of the building. Ah, that was a different story, entirely. The wood was old and dry, and the fire retardant paint has long since lost its effectiveness. It took only a few moments for the wall to start burning, so Otto threw another bottle against a different place on the wall. Again, flames began to eat away at the wall. He had time to throw five more Molotov Cocktails before the building was flaming to his satisfaction.

About this time, a fire alarm went off inside the building. The first warning was in the kitchen, so the cooks and helpers came pouring out the door and ran well away from the flames. There was a pause before anybody else showed up, but some woman in a fancy outfit rushed out the front door. She was blasted to pieces by three bullets hitting her in the chest and head. She fell so that she partially blocked the door, and it could not fully close. No more than two steps behind her was another woman wearing some sort of waitress uniform. She was ignored by the shooters, and she ran into the street.

However, the door became clogged very quickly by women trying to push their way outside. The way they had wedged themselves in the door, it seemed almost redundant to shoot them; nobody was coming through that door until some order was restored within the restaurant. However, that looked to be impossible.

Somebody threw a chair against a front window and knocked out the plastic sheet. It didn't fall far because of the grill across the window. Several women were frantically trying to push the grill out of the way, but it was not going anywhere until somebody pressed the proper release catch inside. The panic had now reached the point that that would never happen in this lifetime.

Meanwhile, a waitress burst out of the emergency exit and ran for the street. She was ignored by the shooters, but not so for the woman right behind her. That woman did get clear of the door before she was shot. It took that long for the shooters to verify that she was not an employee of the restaurant.

The other emergency door was opened by a waitress, and she was allowed to escape. However, two rather stout women tried to follow her at the same time and got wedged in the door. Joseph and Irene were responsible for this door, and they did not shoot. They were so busy laughing at the two women fighting with each other as they tried to get through the door. If either one had backed down for a moment, both could have gotten out. Of course, they both would have been shot if that had happened, but they were currently providing considerable entertainment for the two potential shooters.

One of the women screamed and collapsed to the floor as she was attacked from the rear. This broke the bottleneck open and women tried to rush out the door. That's when Joseph and Irene started shooting, and they were successful in keeping anyone from escaping through that door.

On the other hand, the three shooters at the other door were kept busy as women tried to exit through that emergency exit from the very first. There was quite a pile of bodies in front of the door, so many that there was no way for any more people to get out that way. Jack, Sue, and Ima stopped shooting because they had run out of targets.

Very shortly thereafter, the other emergency exit was completely blocked by bodies, so it was a lost cause as far as escaping the flames was concerned. Joseph and his bunch had a short rest as they listened to the screaming coming from inside the restaurant. Smoke was curling out of the doors and the broken window, so they knew that the fire must have reached the main dining area by then.

The back door was not active at the moment because it was engulfed in flames. Any attempt to run out that door meant braving a raging fire, and none of the women inside were yet willing to do that. Otto still had a healthy supply of Molotov Cocktails at his beck and call. The fuses were not lit, but they were otherwise ready for when he needed them.

The door at the front was still blocked by bodies, so nobody was coming out that way, either. At last, the sound of a fire siren was heard headed toward the restaurant. The automatic signal must have tripped at the nearest fire station, and a truck was on the way. Since it was a popular restaurant frequented by the wealthiest of the wealthy, a fire captain was also on the way to see just how much additional help was needed to bring the fire under control and prevent any influential patron from being inconvenienced.

She was horrified when she pulled up an saw the amount of flames and the stacks of bodies at each exit. Actually, she did not have much time to contemplate the scene before she was shot in the small of the back by Lena. Yes, Lena wanted it to be a killing shot, but she did not want the woman to die too quickly or too painlessly. Well, Lena got her wish, because the tempo picked up soon after that, and the fatally wounded fire captain was ignored with the press of other business.

The crew of the fire truck that had arrived did not have much chance to fight the fire because they immediately became the targets of those shooters who could see them. They all died very quickly, and that was the end of that.

A cop was automatically dispatched to the fire, and she called in for help just as she was shot. The sound of the shot that killed her was heard over the radio by the dispatcher. The dispatcher panicked and rang up the signal for a full scale riot, and dozens of cops were called in to pick up riot gear and head for the fire.

Just to keep the fun going, Otto set on fire a building adjacent to the restaurant, and that kicked off its fire alarm, thereby drawing more firefighters to the scene. Meanwhile, he somehow took a personal dislike to the sight of that fire truck parked in the street, so he rared back and sent a Molotov Cocktail toward it with a mighty heave. Either he was very good or unforgivably lucky, because he hit the truck dead center on his first try. His smirk of triumph was matched by the column of flames rising from the truck.