Average Joe and the Extraordinaires by Belart Wright Read Free Book Online Page B

could be felt approaching.
    BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!!!
    A huge
explosion rocked the building and sent dust flying through the air.  Joe heard
a lot of screaming from outside the room.  Joe had never heard men scream like
that.  He scrambled to his feet as fast as he could.  Borland was the closest
thing he had for safety, he hoped.  He stuck close to the man as he had done
with both Beauty and Dahlila.  He was weary and wary of continuously placing
his safety in the hands of others.  As he saw it, he also had no choice.  At
least he isn’t trying to kill me right now , he thought to himself.
    Borland
was smart.  He knew that picking up the officer’s gun marked him for dead, but
he also knew there was something bigger at play and felt that he was probably
marked for dead any way he sliced it.  Better to go out fighting , the
old codger thought.
    The heat
in the building had intensified, and now Joe could hear gunfire.  All he had to
protect him was a graying old man, and that made his stomach twist, turn, and
knot.  There were no windows in this room or in the hall that led to the front
of the building.  That’s where all the shooting was.  They slowly walked down
the hall.
    BANG!
    The new
hole that was pierced into the wall between Borland and Joe had shown Joe that
his life could end so fast that he wouldn’t know he was dead.  Bullets were
much faster in real life than they were on T.V., Joe was learning.  Maybe
whoever had just shot at them couldn’t decide if they wanted Joe or Borland dead
first. An indecisive murderer wasn’t a very good one.
    Borland:
“Get your head out of the clouds, kid, and run!”
    Joe
snapped out of his daze and quickly ran near Borland, a.k.a. the old salty man
with the gun.  The bullpen was a wreck and pandemonium reigned.  Desks were
flipped and fleeting papers were scattered everywhere and looked ghostly as
they fell from and floated through the air amidst a flurry of bullets.  Borland
ducked behind a wooden pillar near the desks.  Joe opted to stick as close as
he could to the floor by crawling.  He couldn’t see anything.  The cops on his
side looked to be shooting in the opposite direction, and more importantly not
at Joe himself.  He wasn’t sure how long that would last considering what had just
happened in the interrogation room.
    Joe
looked up and saw Borland still as a rock and with a firm grip on his gun. 
Borland let out a shot and Joe heard more yelling on the other side.
    “Hank,
get your old hide over here,” yelled a voice that Joe recognized from earlier. 
It was the man named Carl that Borland had spoken to earlier.
    Borland:
“Carl!  They want this boy dead.  He knows things they don’t want to be known.”
    Carl:
“Who’s they?”
    Borland:
“That’s what I’m—”
    A bullet
hit the pillar near Borland’s shoulder and he squeezed his gun off a few times
at the enemies’ direction.
    Borland:
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.”
    Carl:
“Listen! Get him the heck outta here and figure out what this is all about. 
That hallway down there leads to an office with a window you can safely jump
out of. Take it!”
    Borland:
“Thanks, Carl.  Don’t die in here.”
    Carl:
“Ha, I should say that to you.  You’re looking a little rusty, old timer, now
get!”
    Borland
yanked Joe up from the floor.
    Borland:
“Keep your head down unless you want to eat a bullet.”
    Joe
looked up instinctively for a brief second.  What he saw confused him.  On the
other side of the room were more cops, and they were shooting at the cops on
this side of the room.  Why were cops killing other cops?   It didn’t
make any sense.  As he ran with Borland, he was trying to figure out why they
wanted him so dead.  An image of the well-dressed gray-haired man flashed into
his mind.  Maybe he was important.  Borland had interrupted his telling of the
stadium’s events earlier for a description of the man, and seemed quite
interested.
    They