Author’s Note: To my knowledge, every weapon in here is accurately named. A search on the Internet can provide you with a picture if you really want it.

Prologue: The Vengeful

Through the small, bulletproof windows placed high in the back of the transport van for the Alton S.W.A.T. team, I see the mansion.

“Payback time,” someone in the van says. Another agrees.

What had happened was this—two police officers had acquired a search warrant for one Leonard Reno’s mansion, which was situated on the north side of Alton. Reno is thought to be the head of a city-wide criminal empire, though many cops on the force—myself included—feel that he most definitely is, and that there’s no “thought” about it. We just couldn’t get any hard evidence linking him to anything.

That had changed just a couple days ago. We had reason to believe that some incriminating evidence—I’m not precisely sure what, exactly, it was, because I wasn’t privy to that meeting—was hidden in Reno’s expansive house. After obtaining a search warrant that granted them the ability to go through everything they felt like in the place, the two cops had come out here, and one had promptly been killed. After that, the situation had rapidly deteriorated—the remaining officer called in for support before he was shot, and several of the closest patrol cars arrived in minutes.

The mansion had, apparently, virtually opened up with automatic gunfire, effectively pinning the cops behind cars. Someone else radioed back for more help and described the situation, and the S.W.A.T. had been sent in to calm the storm.

I recheck the HK MP5-A3 that I use, then unclip the leather strap that holds my HK P30 handgun in the holster—I might need to get at it in a hurry. The van stops, the sergeant throws the doors open, and everyone piles out into the waning sunlight.

It is probably about six o’clock at night, and the sun’s starting to set, the days dying early because of winter. The bad lighting didn’t stop a fresh chatter of bullets from breaking the tranquil night, small pieces of lead burying themselves in the road and pinging off the van’s sides. S.W.A.T. troops disperse throughout the area, but I’m not exactly paying attention to where they go.

I move up closer, holding the MP5’s stock up against my shoulder, the muzzle pointing down. I stay low, using the cars to block my body as much as possible. The officers who had been there before us fire back at more and more infrequent intervals—they simply aren’t equipped to handle something like this. From the mansion, the fire never seems to cease, with two or three of Reno’s men firing briefly at the cars before the sounds shift, and other thugs come up to shoot.

Someone in the mansion sees me, and he sweeps the barrel of his Ingram MAC M10 across a car to bring it to bear. Only one or two bullets come anywhere close to me, and a metallic click sound can be heard under the shooting. Before he can duck back to reload, I fire two quick bullets, one catching him in the stomach, the other hitting higher, just under the chin. Crimson red splatters the walls behind him, and he drops under the window and out of sight.

I hear a yell from my right, and I look around to see a cop, sitting on the ground, his back pressed up against a car and a both hands pressed against a bullet wound in his leg. I move over to him, checking to see if he was okay. No one from the mansion is firing in our direction, so I ask if he can walk.

“I think so,” he says, but, when he stands up, he staggers, almost falling again. I pull him up with one arm, the other still gripping the handle of the MP5, and half-carry him back to the armored van I had come in. About halfway there, someone shoots at us, and I drop him to the ground, spin, raise the MP5.

A bullet ricochets off my helmet, dazing me slightly, but I saw the muzzle flash that had thrown it at me. Still using the single-fire mode, I snap out another three bullets, silencing the attacker. I shake my head, clearing away the last remnants of the ringing in my skull, then pick the cop back up and complete the trip back to the van.

When I get there, I find the sergeant with a few other members of the S.W.A.T. team.

“There you are,” he yells when he notices me. “Come on, I’ve got a plan.” He proceeds to go over what seems to be a hastily-drawn blueprint of the mansion, pointing out a door that was around to the left of the front entrance.

“You take a team in, storm them from behind,” he tells me, and I nod, signaling the others in the van to follow me. We moved in a ragged, far-spaced line, trying to make sure that no one in the mansion will suspect we’re up to something.

At the door, one of the guys, a Remington 11-87 slung over his back on a strap and carrying a battering ram, smashes the door open with a quick hit to the jamb, and the six of us file inside.

The wide hallways, walls adorned with selections of expensive art, the floors covered in a thick, colorful carpet, go in two different directions, and I split us up, taking one of the two with Remingtons and one of the other men, who was also carrying an MP5 like mine. My group takes the left path, and I send the others along the one that extends out in front of us.

The first door we come to is shut, just like every other one in this hall. The grating metal noise of a pump rumbling up underneath the gunfire, the man with the Remington steps up to the door. He tries the knob, and, finding it locked, fires a round into the door. He steps to the side and pumps the shotgun again, and me and the other MP5-man step up to the door, me in front and low, slightly to his left. I snap the fire mode selector to fully automatic.

Inside the room are two men, both wearing dark jackets over dark shirts and pants, standing in front of two windows and looking our way. They look sort of confused, having heard gunfire come from behind them, and they hesitate a second too long.

I take the one on the left—the climb of the MP5 takes the line of bullets up through his chest and neck, and he jerks backwards, his arm snapping up, a finger spasming and firing off two rounds from a Glock 17. His partner is dropped by mine, and both targets fall heavily to the floor, pools of blood leaking out and mingling on the floor.

We both creep further into the room, and the shotgunner brings up the rear, watching the hallway. I look around the room, noting—and watching—a door off to the right, which probably leads into an adjacent room.

The door suddenly bursts open, and a quick racket of fire erupts from the room beyond. The man with the MP5 catches three bullets and falls backwards, but I don’t take the time to check on him right away.

Framed in the doorway is a large man holding a Mini-Uzi in one hand, the other still resting on the doorknob. He flicks his eyes over to me, and raises the Uzi an inch or so before I tear into him with the MP5, the bullets ripping through his unarmored flesh to bury themselves in the wall of the next room. I hear low voices as the goon falls half-in, half-out of my room, and I take two long steps over to the downed officer, and I feel for a pulse.

There isn’t one, so I call in about an officer down. The sergeant, who was apparently operating the radio, curses and tells me to keep pressing on.

Meanwhile, the shotgunner, hunching over, cautiously creeps up to the thug’s body, keeping the door covered with his Remington. He checks the room as best he can, looking over the man’s corpse to the left, then quickly steps in and pans right, letting a load of pellets loose from the shotgun, then stumbling back, into our room, pumping.

“Got one,” he says, panting, “I think there’s another, though.” We both wait a few seconds, training our guns on the doorway, seeing if the other would come, but nothing happens.

Then, we hear a door open and slam closed, and we look at each other. I move in behind him, but there’s no one alive in the room—just the torn-up body of yet another pistol-wielding thug. He opens the door into the hallway, and I look around for another door into an adjoining room, but this one is lacking that feature.

So, we head back out into the hallway.

“We gotta get these fuckers,” he mutters as we go down the hall. I nod in agreement.

“They got Rurich,” he says. I nod again.

Up ahead, another door opens, and a man in a dark suit comes out, then stops and looks back inside the room, waving his arm frantically, yelling, arguing with someone who doesn’t appear to be listening. I raise the MP5 and flick the mode selector back down to single fire, aiming at the man’s chest.

He suddenly notices us, and fires three or four rounds from a handgun, the bullets missing narrowly, and I fire back, two quick shots meant to put him down. One bullet catches his gun-hand shoulder, and he claps his free palm over it, amazingly still holding his handgun.

The dark-suited man returns fire, and I feel a flash of pain, quickly dulling, tear open along my leg, just above my boot—feels like a bullet grazed me. Since I can’t stand quite as sturdily now, I drop to one knee, and I hear the loud report of the shotgun roar in the hallway, rumbling down the walls. The pellets slam the suit in the chest, and he goes down instantly.

Another man, similarly dressed, replaces him almost instantly, but another shotgun blast drops him. From around a corner at the end of the hallway, another damn suit-man spins out, and a hail of submachine gun fire races at us down the hallway. My partner takes a bullet to the gut, but I’m pretty sure that his Kevlar has protected him.

Preferring to be cautious, however, I kick my way into a door off to our right, pulling him in with me. He stumbles as I drag him, but we get in before anyone else fires at us. I check him quickly, and I appear to be right. I check the remaining bullets in my magazine, and, seeing as how I only have about ten left, I exchange it for the extra thirty-round clip I have, then change back to full auto.

Me and the shotgunner step back out into the hallway, finding it devoid of our previous assailants. We sneak down the carpet-covered floor, watching the doors on either side to see if anyone would leap out to attack. I have an idea that—maybe—Reno was the man the first dark suit had been arguing with, probably trying to get him to escape before the cops managed to get to him.

We get to the corner with no incident, but, around the corner, three more men in suits stand in front of an open door, two looking in our direction, the third talking low and fast with someone who seems to be someone more important. This man wears a brown leather jacket over a black turtleneck, and a TEC-9 is gripped in his right hand.

We’re seen almost instantly, and the two looking at us shout, drawing pistols from inside their dark jackets. The third turns around, and the other man jumps just a little, startled at our sudden appearance.

I fire a burst from my MP5 as my partner blasts one of them with the Remington. Both go down, but the third suit fires five or six rounds, fast, from the handgun, two hitting my partner in the neck and head, one piercing my shoulder, the rest hitting the wall behind me, and I roll to my right, ending up safely back around the corner.

My shoulder hurts—bad. There’s no way I can use the MP5, so I drop it, then draw the P30, holding it in my right hand. I stand up, press against the wall, and sidestep to the corner, quickly spinning out to confront them.

I aim quickly, and not well, before I fire—I hit the suit in the right shoulder, then the stomach, and he jerks with each impact, rolls to the side, then doubles over and falls onto his face. I level the P30 at the last man’s head before he can raise the TEC-9, and he glares at me for all of one second.

Then, he makes his first mistake—he moves the TEC-9. His second is refusing to drop the weapon at my command, and his third is actually raising it to fire—one squeeze on the trigger, and a 9mm round hurtles through the air, hitting his forehead and erupting out of the back of his skull, scattering fragments of bone and gray matter onto the walls. He stays standing for another fraction of a second, then teeters backwards and falls. I drop my right arm down, suddenly feeling tired and drained. The pain from the cut-like bullet wound in my leg suddenly rushes in, and the shot to my shoulder intensifies.

I turn around slowly, taking two steps over to my partner. He isn’t breathing, and I feel a flash of rage under my exhaustion—they’ve taken both of them.

My radio suddenly crackles to life, and I hear the sergeant shouting that Reno has, apparently, escaped, which elicits another surge of anger from me. I pull it off my belt and depress the button once he stops talking, telling him that two S.W.A.T. men were down, and describing the man I’d killed.

“Damn,” he says when I end my transmission. He pauses for a few seconds.

Then, “Fuck, two down, you said? Damn it. That guy, though—it sounds like it might be Reno’s brother, if you’re describing him right. Anyway, get back out here. Over and out.” He clicks off, and I retrace my steps through the mansion, exiting into the now-fully dark side garden, then walking out and around to the front lawn.

Bullet-riddled police cruisers are positioned all over the place, and the S.W.A.T. vans still sit in the back, hulking shadows in the darkness. As I walk towards the sergeant, who’s standing, his hands clasped behind his back, near one of the trucks, I see white-clad medical teams picking up wounded, dead, and dying cops, taking them back to flashing ambulances that cast an eerie, flickering glow over the whole scene.

I reach the sergeant, and he glances at me, then back up at the mansion. His face is drawn and tight, and he looks angry. We stand in silence for a few moments, just the two of us, before two of the other three men I’d gone in with join us.

Three remain from six—I clench my teeth, not letting my face evince any of what I’m feeling, but, inside, I am raging—my blood seems to heat to match the sun, and a million thoughts of revenge flash through my mind, before I remember that that son of a bitch has escaped.

“All this, and Reno escapes,” the sergeant says, voicing my thoughts perfectly.

As we watch, more medical teams scurry in and out of the mansion, bringing a number of sheet-covered stretchers, three of which I knew carry our dead men. The last suit I’d shot has somehow survived, though—the gut shot hasn’t managed to kill him yet. Another surge of anger, quickly tamped down and reigned in, roils up. He’d killed the shotgunner—Christ, I don’t even know the guy’s name.

---

Months later, all of Reno’s surviving henchmen are still in jail. Many have been given life sentences, because other crimes can be linked to them, but others, the ones with cleaner pasts, will be stuck there for a while, but not forever.

Sometimes, though, I wish our state still practiced the death penalty.

I’m returning home after a relatively routine day—meaning nothing had actually happened. The S.W.A.T. team still likes to train nearly constantly, just in case, though, and the day had been filled with the usual runs and exercises. The disarming exercise had left me on my back a few times, when I was playing the “bad guy,” and my wrist is in a little pain from one particularly skilled cop. I’m looking forward to relaxing, having dinner, and a good night’s sleep—I want to spend the day with Veronica. I haven’t had this much time to be with my wife in a long time.

As I wait at a red light at the entrance to our neighborhood, I stare at the gold band on my right ring finger—Veronica. The love of my life, and she’s less than a minute away. I glance out the driver-side window as I turn the corner into our neighborhood, seeing a brilliant orange-gold array of colors in the sky, the winter sun sinking behind a wall of trees and lighting the clouds on fire.

I pull into the driveway, next to Veronica’s car, and get out, taking a moment to stretch in the cool, crisp air. A gust of wind snakes its way down the street, kicking up dead leaves and dragging a thin veil of powdery snow along behind it. I crunch my way up the front walk, tap my shoes off on the stoop, unlock the door, and open it.

I take one step into the house and stop. It’s dark—Veronica usually has the lights on now, seeing as how it’s winter.

Maybe she’s asleep. I survey the living room, and spy her on the couch, lying on her side, facing the back of the piece of furniture.

I close the door, then walk over quietly, shake her arm, get no response. I shake her again, harder, then roll her towards me—I snatch my hand away.

A bright red, still-bleeding gash has been drawn across her throat from ear to ear. Her shirt is turning half-red, the lower portion still remaining bright white. Closing my eyes, pushing the image away, trying to clear my head, I turn around, opening my eyes again and refocusing on the room.

There has to be someone here. Old training skills take over, and I step up to the hallway, trying to discern figures from the black shapes of furniture that stand in the darkness. I hear a shuffling noise from the dining room, and I move slowly down the hallway, trying not to let my shoes make much noise on the wood paneling that covers the floor.

When I get to the dining room, a sudden movement from my right draws my attention, and I fling myself forward, and, even as I hurtle through the air, I think that I’ve made some kind of horrible mistake. I hear a gear-like grate ending with a click—the hammer being pulled back on a handgun.

From my position on the ground, I can do nothing, so I just roll over, and I find myself face-to-face with an S&W model 629 magnum. Behind the barrel, I see a large man in a storm-gray suit, his blunt face expressionless.

I hear another noise behind me, and I swivel my eyes up to see another man, similar, but in a navy blue suit, stroll out from behind the partition that separates the dining room and the kitchen.

“Hello,” he says, using two fingers on each hand to twitch his pants up before crouching down, his face just over mine. “Mr. Reno sends his regards. He also wants you to know that you killed his brother—this is nothing personal from me.” He grins, then, and adds, “Just following orders, you know?”

He produces a knife from one of the pockets of his blue jacket, and I glimpse red on the blade, and images flash in my mind—my wife, laughing as we drove to her mother’s house, my wife, watching me over dinner at a restaurant, my wife, eyes closed, mouth partly opened, throat torn apart, bleeding all over the couch, and I try to push them away, try to maintain control, but it won’t work—won’t work.

The man in the blue suit grabs my right hand, pulls it up in front of my face. He chokes out a low, mirthless laugh, then closes all of my fingers into a fist, except my ring finger, and I see the flash of gold, then a flash of silver, and the knife is at my finger.

He presses the blade against my flesh, and my eyes snap shut, and I clamp my teeth down, pressing my lips together, and only a low moan escapes my throat. The pain sears across my finger, between the first and seconds knuckles, and then—and then I don’t feel it anymore.

I open my eyes again, see, with slightly blurred vision, my right hand, only four fingers still on it. The ring finger is gone—the wedding band is gone.

A sharp blow to the side of my head sends me tumbling down into darkness, and I let it happen, let my mind detach itself.

Before I completely black out, I feel one of them life me, and I’m dimly aware of being moved outside, the cold air ruffling my hair and clothes.

Veronica . . .