299 Days: The Visitors

Chapter 140 “Clear!” (May 14)

Grant jabbed the end of his rifle at the screaming woman who was lunging at him. It was like a bayonet jab, but he didn’t have a bayonet on the end. He just jammed her hard with the barrel of his rifle. Very hard, violently hard.

In that moment, he forgot that he had a flash hider on the end of his rifle with serrations for cutting through a car window. They were fairly common on tactical flash hiders. They were only about $10 more than a smooth-edged flash hider. Grant had Chip put it on his AR when he was building it. Back then, Chip pointed at the sharp serrations on the end of the flash hider and said, “These ain’t for a car window, my friend. It’s a last-ditch mini-bayonet.” Grant had wondered if having a sharp-edged flash hider was really useful or just a gimmick.

He had just found out that it was no gimmick.

Between the woman’s speed running toward him and Grant’s jamming her with the end of his rifle, the serrated flash hider was thrust about a half an inch into her chest. The force of the collision actually hurt Grant’s right wrist, which was on the pistol grip of his AR. He almost fell backwards from the force.

The woman crumpled up and started to fall backwards. The end of Grant’s rifle was stuck in her, so when she fell, Grant’s rifle started to come out of his hands. He yanked it back and it came out of her chest. Pretty easily, actually. It hadn’t gone in too far.

Blood squirted, but not nearly as much as when he’d shot the looters. There had been gallons of blood then. There were just a couple of spoonfuls on her and his rifle.

Grant regained his balance when he yanked the AR back. His feet had been planted far apart in a wide stance, just like they’d practiced, although they had never practiced lunging the end of a rifle into someone. They had never even thought of it. Grant just did that naturally; a reflex. He was in a fight. He’d been in those before.

Grant remembered the time he had to take the dog chain off his dog and use it as an improvised weapon when his dad was chasing him. Jamming the end of the rifle in her chest was just like that dog chain: a hastily improvised weapon in a fight. He just made it up as he went. He was in a fight. He didn’t think about stuff. He just fought.

The woman was on the ground now, lying in the doorway between the kitchen and the rest of the house, coiled up and moaning. For the first time, Grant viewed her as a human being. She had been a threat coming at him before. A thing. In motion. Trying to kill him. Not a person. Now, she was a person. A poor, helpless, unarmed, pathetic wounded person.

Grant’s first impulse was to drop to the floor and try to help her. Right as he started to, he regained his sense. This house was full of who knows how many bad guys who wanted to kill him and the Team. This was no time for helping that woman. Besides, Grant instantly realized, her bleeding wasn’t too bad.

Grant kept sweeping the doorway with his AR. No one else was coming—right that second, which was the time frame he was thinking in. One second. Then the next second. There was no flow to time. It was a series of one-second snap shots.

Grant heard Wes screaming at someone. “Get down! Get down!” Then silence. There was no sound in the house. For the first time in…the five seconds or so since the first person had come out the back door.

The Team hadn’t really practiced room clearing on the range. They had to use imaginary rooms with lines drawn in the dirt representing walls and doors. It wasn’t too realistic.

Besides, Grant had always thought, what are the odds that a lawyer would need to learn how to clear a room, even if he was pretty sure the United States would be collapsing in a year or two? So, he did what he’d seen on TV. He yelled, “Kitchen clear!” He heard others yelling “Bedroom clear!” and other rooms clear.

Wes yelled, “Got one in the bedroom!”

A prisoner or a body? Grant wondered.

Rich yelled, “One dead in the front room!” Grant froze. Was the dead one of the Team?

“Dead bad guy!” Pow yelled. Thank God.

Grant yelled “Wounded in the kitchen!” He realized that they might think he was wounded and he didn’t want them to leave a person they were covering and come running in so he yelled, “Wounded woman in the kitchen!”

Grant remembered Bobby and Scotty outside and the girl and woman running around out there. He pointed his head out the back door so Bobby and Scotty could hear him.

“Go get the girl and woman,” Grant yelled to them. “Don’t let them leave!” Then he realized that bad guys could come from any direction so he yelled, “One of you cover the backyard!” He heard Bobby and Scotty yelling instructions to each other.

It was still quiet. Strangely quiet. The woman in the doorway was moaning a little. It seemed like she had the wind knocked out of her with Grant’s flash-hider lunge.

From what Grant could piece together, Wes was covering a prisoner and Pow, Rich, and Ryan had shot someone. Grant finally realized he was able to move throughout the house because the person he was covering was unarmed and wounded, so he went through the first doorway, stepping over the crumbled woman in her underwear.

He was terrified to go through a door anticipating there might be someone ready to shoot him. He realized that Wes might be thinking the same thing and mistake Grant for a threat.

So, just like they’d practiced, Grant yelled, “Moving!”

Wes yelled back, “Move,” meaning that he and everyone else knew that Grant would be moving.

Grant went into two rooms. He expected to be shot each time. People naturally close their eyes when they expect some kind of impact, and getting shot counts as an impact. You need your eyes open, Grant remembered Special Forces Ted saying. Grant realized his eyes were closed for a millisecond and forced himself to open them.

The first room he went into was a bathroom. He burst into the room with his eyes open, forcing himself to keep them open.

This sucked. It was way harder than he ever could have imagined. Grant was realizing the professionals would do this much better, but the professionals were busy right then so it was up to the Team. The “constables,” Grant corrected himself.

The bathroom was a mess, but didn’t have anyone in it. Grant felt a surge of relief. The shower curtain was open so no one could be hiding in the shower. He yelled, “Bathroom clear!”

He went down the hall with his AR shouldered and ready to fire. Everything he saw was through his red-dot sight. He knew that a bullet would go precisely where that red dot was. He went to the door of the next room, pointing his rifle into the room and starting to go around the corner, exposing himself as he did. He got all the way into the doorway of that room, which looked like the girl’s bedroom. No one seemed to be in there. Grant checked the closet. No one.

Then Grant noticed a man’s jeans on the floor.

Oh God. Not that. That explained why the little girl ran out of the house naked. Oh God.

“Bedroom clear!” Grant yelled.

He heard Ryan yell, “Moving!”

Grant and Wes yelled back “Move!”

Grant heard Ryan going through the house. Ryan yelled, “Clear,” after each room.

Grant didn’t know whether he should also be clearing rooms, standing in the hallway, or just staying in the bedroom where he wouldn’t get in anyone’s way and wouldn’t accidentally be shot by the Team. Maybe it was cowardice, but Grant decided to stay put in the bedroom. He thought he’d at least get some bearing on where people were. For the first time during the raid, Grant stopped moving and just thought. For a total of about two seconds, which seemed like forever.

It was weird: Grant desperately wanted to know exactly where his guys were. Not just so he could coordinate with him; he had this intense urge to know that his guys were nearby. They were like a security blanket. He needed to know he was not off on his own. He needed his guys around.

“Where you at, Wes?” Grant yelled, realizing that he sounded scared.

“Here!” Wes yelled, sounding scared, too. Grant could tell from the direction of the sound that Wes was a room or two away to the right.

“Got it,” Grant said. He could have said “Roger,” but they weren’t a real SWAT team or military unit. They were just some guys who managed to not get killed. So far.

It took Ryan a minute or so to clear the other rooms. He wasn’t in a rush; he’d done this before, albeit in huts in Afghanistan. He would hate to miss something and have a bad guy pop up, but that minute seemed like hours. Everything had moved so incredibly quickly, and now it was dragging on.

Grant used the time to catch his breath. And to think. What would he do if someone came into the bedroom? If no one came into the bedroom, then what should he do next? Get medical attention to the woman? Were Bobby and Scotty capturing the girl and woman who ran into the backyard? Were there any more dogs?

When he was sure absolutely nothing was moving and he had a spare second or two, Grant did a press check of his AR and Glock. Of course he had a round in each one. He looked at the clear plastic window in the Magpul magazine in his AR. He had a full magazine, of course, since he hadn’t fired a shot. The press check was a nervous habit; something to calm him.

After a few more seconds of no one moving and silence, Grant felt it was OK to put the safety on his AR. He kept his right thumb on the safety, as he had done a thousand times before at the range, to remind himself it was on and to be able to instantly click it off, if necessary. He could feel himself coming down. It was like he had been on a drug and now it was wearing off.

Duh. He was on a drug: adrenaline. The superhuman strength and heightened senses the adrenaline provided were slowly dissipating. Grant’s mouth got dry – so dry his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Just like when he shot the looters.

Grant heard someone coming toward the bedroom he was in. The adrenaline surged back.

He assumed it was Ryan since he only heard one person moving and Ryan was clearing the other rooms. Should he tell the person coming that he was in the bedroom? What if it was a bad guy? Then again, what if he didn’t announce himself and either he or Ryan shot each other. The odds of a bad guy walking around this house right now with Ryan out there were pretty slim.

“Bedroom cleared!” Grant yelled. He aimed his AR at the doorway and was ready to click off the safety. He figured it was Ryan walking by so he kept the safety on, though he was prepared to click it off in a split second.

“Roger that!” Ryan yelled. Ryan could tell from the direction of Grant’s voice where the room was that Grant was in. He didn’t want to go past that doorway and be mistaken for a bad guy. It was amazing how much thought went into preventing friendly fire; about as much thought as taking down the bad guys in the first place.

“Moving past you!” Ryan yelled.

“Move!” Grant responded as he swung the muzzle of his rifle to a safe direction away from where Ryan was. Ryan moved past the open door. Ryan kept going down the hall toward the bathroom and the kitchen.

Soon Ryan yelled, “Bathroom clear!”

Then Ryan yelled “Wounded woman in the kitchen,” and then “Kitchen clear!” Then he yelled, “Moving out the back door,” and Bobby yelled back, “Move!”

A few seconds later Ryan yelled, “House clear!”

Grant could relax. Kind of. He headed for the room Wes was in. “Moving toward you, Wes!” He yelled.

“Move!” Wes yelled. “I got a prisoner in here!” Then he heard a man arguing with Wes.

Grant heard Wes yelling, “Shut up! Shut the fuck up!”

Grant came into the room, which looked like another bedroom, but there was so much crap strewn all over the place it was hard to tell. There was Wes near the doorway aiming his AR at a guy on his knees with his hands out to the sides. The guy was in his underwear. It was the man who had run out the back door, but had turned around and gone back inside.

Grant aimed his AR at the man and said, “Got him covered.”

Wes nodded. Wes slowly lowered his AR. He was in great shape and an AR is a light rifle, but his arms were getting tired from holding it up all that time at the guy. Wes could feel the adrenaline level lowering. He was starting to relax. He kept his AR in the general direction of the man, but didn’t have it shouldered.

Grant saw himself and Wes in the mirror in the bedroom. They both had about a week’s worth of beard. They looked like fighters, not the nice guys who went shooting together just a few months ago. They had a hardness, a seriousness to them. They were deadly serious and taking care of business. Those carefree nice guys were gone. They’d been replaced by fighters. Reluctant fighters.

Grant heard some people moving around. Ryan announced, “Getting a corpsman to the woman in the kitchen.” Ryan, the Marine, called a medic by the Marine term of “corpsman.” The woman was moaning and Tim was talking to her.

The man Grant was covering was interested in the woman’s condition.

“Josie!” the man yelled out. “You OK? Baby? Baby?”

Grant yelled, “Shut up!” He didn’t want them to be using some kind of code. He thought that was pretty unlikely, but still.

“Josie? Hey, baby!” the man yelled.

Wes was close to the man and said, “He said to shut up.”

The man looked up at Wes and said, “Fuck you.”

Wes kicked him in the face, hard, with his big boots. It knocked the man down, and Wes nearly lost his balance. The man started screaming. The situation was deteriorating rapidly.