Home Invasion - J. A. Johnstone [78]
Several of the FPS men stood back with guns cradled in their arms, watching the pickup burn. They weren’t lifting a finger to help Pearson. Another trooper had somebody on the ground, pinning him down with a knee in the small of the back. Two more troopers covered the prisoner with their weapons.
Alex brought the police car to a halt and leaped out. She ran toward the troopers, calling, “Hey! Hey, what’s going on here?”
A couple of the men who’d been watching the truck burn swung around sharply and lifted their guns. As they pointed the weapons at Alex, one of them yelled, “Stop right there!”
Alex skidded to a halt and held up her hands, palms out. “Take it easy,” she said. “I’m Chief Bonner.”
“We know who you are,” the man snapped. “You’re a civilian, just like the rest of these people.”
Alex forced herself not to bristle at being called a civilian. Losing her temper with these goons wasn’t going to help matters.
“What’s going on here?” she asked. “Who’s that you have on the ground?”
“Terrorist, ma’am,” replied the trooper who had just finished slipping plastic restraints around the prisoner’s wrists.
Alex was close enough now to recognize the thinning white hair and overalls. “Terrorist, hell!” she burst out. “That’s Elmer Davis!”
“He not only refused to surrender his weapon, he attempted to use it against us,” the trooper replied as he got to his feet. “That makes him a terrorist.”
Alex sighed. She had known Elmer for years, ever since she was a little girl, in fact. She knew he carried an old Winchester pellet gun in a gun rack in his pickup and used it to shoot at rattlesnakes when he saw them on the side of the road. The pellet gun was at least as old as Elmer was, probably older, but he kept it in good repair.
“I know this man,” she told the troopers. “That Winchester of his is practically an antique. It may be an antique. And it’s not even a real—”
“Doesn’t matter,” one of the black-uniformed men replied with a shake of his head. “A firearm is a firearm. They’re all forbidden.”
“Did he try to shoot you? I have a hard time believing that.”
Phil Pearson just about had the fire out now. The fire extinguisher sputtered as it ran out of chemicals. He tossed it aside and turned to face Alex and the troopers.
“No, he didn’t try to shoot at them,” he said angrily. “I’ll tell you what happened, Chief. Elmer and I were just standing there on the loading dock talking when the first one of those SUVs came up. A couple of fellas got out and started yellin’ about how Elmer had to turn over that old rifle he had in his pickup.”
“That’ll do, citizen,” one of the troopers said. “We’re in charge here.”
“No, by God, it won’t do,” Pearson said. “Elmer came down the steps from the dock and tried to tell ’em about how he never used the rifle for anything except shootin’ at snakes. He said he’d show ’em it was just a pellet gun, and then they opened fire on him!”
“Is that true?” Alex demanded.
“The suspect never said the weapon was a pellet gun,” the spokesman for the troopers said. “He just said that he’d show us, and we took that to be a threat and fired a warning burst. A moment later reinforcements arrived, and one of them took out the truck with a grenade to make sure that the suspect wouldn’t use the weapon against us while we took him into custody.”
Alex stared at the men for a long moment before saying, “Let me get this straight. You fired automatic weapons at a seventy-five-year-old man, knocked him to the ground, cuffed him, and blew up his truck … because he had a pellet gun in it?”
“This is none of your affair, ma’am,” the trooper snapped. He turned to the others and ordered curtly, “Take the suspect back to the command post for interrogation.”
“What?” Alex said. “After all this, you’re going to take him in? Really?”
“Colonel Grady