ired. Need sleep.”
Odin ran up and slobbered on my leg.
“Disgusting,” I told him, but I rubbed his head anyway. With our connection reaffirmed, he ran over to a yippie terrier and chased it around a tree with funky orange bark.
The damn garage door behind me went up again, accompanied by the detestable and continuous warning sounds. My back and shoulders tensed, and my heart rate increased.
My mind continued to flash back and forth – the Iraqi desert, Bridgett’s body on the floor of my boss’s office building, Lia’s moans as I slid inside of her, and the taste of sand.
It was too much…just too much.
“Bleep! Bleep! Bleep!”
“Motherfucker!” I growled low as the sound from behind me made my teeth clench. My right index finger gripped back against my palm, letting me know what my body wanted.
The woman who apparently owned the yippie terrier glanced over at me dubiously. My eyes met hers, and I held her gaze until she looked away. She quickly moved herself and her dog to the other side of the small park.
“Like that’s gonna help you.”
Thirty seconds after it stopped, the blaring, beeping sound began again.
I capitulated to the growing need inside of me.
Whistling for Odin, I snapped his leash back on his collar and marched across the park to my apartment building. Odin whined at me and actually pulled back a bit at his leash, which he never did. I glanced back at him, and he nearly cowered.
I didn’t have time for that, though. I had other things to do, so I hauled him to the building against his will.
“Come on, come on, come on,” I muttered as the elevator took forever to get to my floor. I pressed the button several dozen times, but it didn’t seem to help. As soon as the doors opened, I hauled Odin down the hallway and into my apartment. I released his leash, filled his water dish, and then turned to something far more desirable.
In my bedroom closet, way in the back, were my desert fatigues. I hadn’t worn them since my forced retirement, but they still fit pretty well. I pulled the dog tags that sat at the bottom of the ceramic dish on my dresser over my head, and then I turned back to the closet.
Odin whined from the doorway.
I pulled my Barrett rifle out of its duffle bag, assembled it, and opened up my balcony door. I knelt down on the ground and opened up the bipod to stabilize the weapon and then lay down behind it. With my feet sticking out through the balcony rails on one side, I took careful aim across the park through the scope. I placed the cross hairs right at the light next to the door and waited.
It was only a minute or two before the light started to blink, the door started to open, and the bleep bleep bleep warning signal screeched across the area.
“You are going to crack someday, aren’t you, Lieutenant?”
“Sure am.”
I fired.
The light exploded, but the noise continued. In a smooth arch, I moved my aim and fired at a box to the left of the door, which sent shrapnel around the sidewalk but still didn’t end the noise. There was another small electric box up near the corner of the garage door, and my third shot destroyed it and left the park in blessed electronic silence.
The people noise, however, increased significantly.
There was screaming from around the park, people rushing out of the Mexican restaurant at the end of the strip mall, and barking dogs from the dog run. There was a row of windows in the red brick building that housed the offending garage, and I blew them out one by one. The glass fell to the sidewalk and shattered further as spent cases began to cover my balcony.
The parents of children on the playground wrapped their arms around their offspring and ducked under slides and swings. Owners tried to leash their dogs and get out of the open.
I switched to a new magazine and then kept firing.
My ears were ringing, and I could hear Odin barking from the room behind me, but I shut out everything I could. The remaining windows in the building shattered as I fired repeatedly. It was just me, the trigger, and the recoil of the weapon against my shoulder.
I wanted more, though.
The crosshairs found one of the restaurant patrons, and I focused right above her eye.