Tim Smedlund

"Lead flew by at ridiculous speeds"

Lead flew by at ridiculous speeds. Wood exploded next to my shoulder. I’m pretty sure I got a projectile splinter in my lower left bicep. I turned to Gary, my partner.
​“Yeah, let’s go on in. Yeah, they won’t have that many guys in there. We can take them on ourselves.” I said it in a decisively sarcastic tone. It was that idiot’s idea to come in here, all Dirty Harry like, guns blazing.
​“Shut up and keep shooting!” Our voices were at a yell, despite only being a few feet apart. The combination of constant gunfire and the ringing in our ears required it. I chose to accept Gary’s advice, and took in a deep breath preparing to expose myself to get off a few shots. I turned, gluing my right shoulder to the wooden support post. I brought my Glock .45 up with my left hand and shut my right eye tight. I looked down the sight and tried to find a target. I heard a whoomp before I felt my left arm collapse. My body was corkscrewed sideways and I flew into the post. I hit the ground and watched the red ketchup looking stuff ooze out of me. I knew I had been shot, but my physiological side hadn’t quite caught up yet, because I felt no pain. My back was warm and wet. So this is what it feels like to die.
24 hours earlier
​“They were here. They had to be.” I stared at the empty warehouse building, trying to figure out how they had cleared out so quickly. There was no way they had known we were coming.
​“They knew we were coming Frank. That is the only way. With the equipment they would have needed to break into that bank last night that is the only way they could have gotten out in time.” Gary, my partner on this job, was on the same track of thinking I was.
​“I know that, but there isn’t any possible way they knew. We only used non-federal cameras to piece together their location. They could never have known we knew where they were.” I ran my hand through my hair. “What is going on Gary?”
​“This is the best band of thieves I have ever seen in action.” Said Gary, “Either by dumb luck or uncompromising skill we are always one step behind.”
​These guys weren’t just the best in our lifetimes; these guys were the best ever. 6 bank jobs, 14 art galleries and a museum in the past 4 years, the total worth of the merchandise stolen coming to approximately 37 million dollars, and not once has the FBI or any other agency been able to collar this band of thieves. Me, Gary, and my FBI task force came close once, in Peru, working with the local agencies. We caught on of their stolen items on the black market, and were this close to making an arrest when our man on the inside disappeared, and the sting operation we had set up had to be terminated. That sting was probably the most airtight I had ever set up, and I was a master of the sting. His body washed up on the shores of the Pacific a week later. Gary took a step closer to me.
​“You think we have a rat in the henhouse?” I gave him a bit of a sideways look. Gary had an unhealthy obsession with rats in our task force.
​“Let’s not jump to any conclusions, not yet at least.” I didn’t want to cause any paranoia with in the team. Besides, I didn’t have anyone who I thought was actually worthy of looking into as a rat. I had hand-picked every member of my task force, and was willing to trust my life to any one of them.
​ “I’m just saying, it looks more and more likely by the minute.” Gary did have a point though. These thieves seemed to be 3 steps ahead of us no matter where we tried to hit them, and they never made mistake. That reeked of an inside job. It reeked to high heaven.
​“Hey Frank!” My CSI guy, Bo, called out to me. Bo originated from the Deep South, and therefore had a heavy drawl in his speech. But don’t let that fool you. Bo was the very best at what he did, and what he did was find evidence. I walked over to where he was, about halfway across the warehouse 20 yards away.
​“What you find Bo?” I asked.
​ “The dang jackpot, that’s what.” He held up a piece of broken glass that had been dusted for prints. Two thirds of a fingerprint could be seen on the glass shard. “Those careful boys finally missed one.”
​“Perfect. Bag that sucker Bo, and rush it back to the lab.” I told him.
​ “Bo,” Gary said, “How about you keep this one quiet, ok? Don’t want to spook any of the team.” Bo looked at me. I was the boss, and Bo would keep quiet if I told him to keep quiet. I nodded my head yes.
​“Quiet it is then.” Bo said. He set the glass in an evidence bag, sealed it, and put it in his pocket.
​ “We got them.” Gary said, smiling. Strange. His smile looked forced to me. No, I’m just being paranoid. All this talk of an insider is messing with my head.
9 hours later
​Gary and I were sitting at the counter of a little mom and pop hamburger shop. The bacon cheeseburger I had ordered was absolutely delicious. We were still waiting for Bo to get back to us about a print. Nothing had come up so far, but the last time I talked to him was about two hours ago. My phone rang as if on cue. It was Bo.
​“Hey Bo, you find something?”
​“I got a dinger on that finger-print. Guy’s name is Norman Jackson, 32 years old. American.” Yes. We got those punks by the throat now. “Had to run it through Interpol to get his print to hit. He didn’t have a rap sheet here, but he got printed once in an airport for a suspicious item in his carry on. That turned out to be nothing, but that’s not important. What is important is this little tidbit of information I just came across.” I had been about to take another bite of my cheeseburger, but I set it down and leaned forward in my chair. “He boarded a flight to Paris, one way.” My eyes got wide with excitement.
​“When does it land?”
​“One hour ago.” I closed my phone and looked straight at Gary.
​“Pay the bill,” I said. “We’re going to Paris.
8 hours later
​ Gary convinced me that it could only be me, him, and our computer guy, Jackie, on that flight to Paris. French police were notoriously hard to deal with, and despite the fact that we had special international privileges we didn’t want to step on any toes with a huge FBI task force rolling into town like Wild West cowboys. That behavior was generally frowned upon. As soon as Jackie stepped off the plane, he had tapped into every camera feed he could find in the general area. Luckily, France seemed to have an uncanny amount of cameras in the area. We all watched the monitor looking for a sign of Norman Jackson. Finally, after watching footage for nearly an hour, we caught him loading a bag into a van with multiple other people piling in at the same time. I told Jackie to track that van with every red light camera, every security camera and any other source he could find, but we needed that vans final destination. Jackie found it. He is a bit of a wizard like that. It was only a few miles from the airport, which we were still in.
​“Gary, we need to call the French police, get them to send us some help.”
​ “There is no time for that Frank. We got to hit them now; we can’t wait for any help. They won’t be ready for a fight. Don’t worry, we can take them down.” Of course, he was right. And of course I listened to him. So we drove to the location Jackie showed us. Kicked in the door. Came in, like Dirty Harry, guns blazing. Whoomp. Ketchup oozing. And I was lying on the ground. My back wet and warm. I was hazy, going in and out of consciousness. Losing a lot of blood really fast. I wasn’t too far gone to not notice Gary yelling out to the people behind the barrier shooting the guns at us. The gunfire stopped. He turned to where the bullets were coming toward and started yelling. What are you doing Gary? Get back behind the pillar before you get shot! I think adrenaline brought me back from the edge of death for a bit, because I regained my hearing. I caught Gary in mid-sentence.
​“…were supposed to hit him, not me! Where did you idiots learn to shoot!?” Wait, what? “I’m the mastermind to this whole operation, what were you planning on doing, clipping me on accident?” It can’t be. Gary turned to me. He saw my eyes open. He saw the life in them.
​“Sorry it had to be this way Frank. But you got too close. You know, I thought you might catch on earlier. All my talk of a rat in the henhouse; I was dropping pretty big hints.” I felt a fury rising in me. My best friend had betrayed me for a bunch of criminals. I felt the gun clutched in my hand. I knew what I had to do. With all my remaining strength, I lifted my hand cannon toward Gary. “Sorry pal can’t let you do that.” He aimed his weapon. I aimed mine. Muzzle flash. Lights out.