Strong Rain Falling: A Caitlin Strong Novel (Caitlin Strong Novels) by Jon Land Read Free Book Online Page A

on his cell phone.
    The pellets cracked the glass of both lenses and sent flecks flying toward his eyes. The man used his free hand to tear the glasses off and swipe at his now red and watery eyes, even as he opened up wildly with his nine-millimeter pistol.
    Cort Wesley shoved Luke up and over the game’s heavy wood, waist-high front wall and then pulled himself over with his legs swept to the sides. The gunman’s initial shots found nothing as a result, his next bullets flying even more askew with his aim further upset by the unexpected turn of events.
    “Dad…”
    “Stay down!”
    “Dad!”
    “Down!” Cort Wesley ordered again, yanking a pair of freshly loaded gallery rifles down from the counter.
    Ridiculous to think their rounds could accomplish much at all, but Cort Wesley figured this was the best time to try, with the gunman’s original intentions thrown all out of whack. He timed his lurch upward to coincide with a time lag he took to mean the gunman was jacking a fresh magazine home, and found the man in his sights just as he was bringing his pistol back up from fifty feet away.
    Cort Wesley peppered him with a barrage of pellets from both rifles, his shots all aimed at the man’s face. He watched the man jerk both his hands up to shield his already hurt eyes, eliminating, for the moment anyway, the threat posed by his gun.
    Cort Wesley was just about to leap back over the counter, when he caught more shapes pushing their way inward against the flow of panicked park-goers fleeing the area. He dropped down again, shielding Luke with his own frame just as fresh gunfire started—four guns, his hearing told him, all nine-millimeter pistols. Then a fifth was added to the mix, evidence of the original shooter regaining enough of his senses to rejoin the attack that blistered his ears and sent splinters and shards of wood spewing into the air.
    “Dad!” Luke wailed again.
    And Cort Wesley felt the tug of helplessness that was no stranger to anyone who knows combat. But that tug had an entirely different feel when something much more was at stake than just himself or his mission. He had to protect his son. Priority One.
    Which meant taking out the five gunmen with his own Glock stowed back in his truck, locked up inside in compliance with park rules.
    Cort Wesley’s battle-tested mind churned through everything it had recorded near the shooting gallery, searching for some weapon, some equalizer. Cooking grease, hot coffee, the oil used to make the popcorn … What about turning the big Clydesdale horses giving wagon rides into a stampede?
    “Stay here, son!” Cort Wesley ordered, no idea what he was going to do for sure, once exposed beyond the shooting gallery.
    “Dad!”
    “Do what I say!”
    Cort Wesley realized he was squeezing the boy’s arm hard enough to make him wince, stripping his hand free just as he heard the loud grating sound of an engine racing in the red, a vehicle risking its transmission to surge right into the middle of the gunfight. There was a screech of tires, followed by the sickening thud of steel meeting flesh and bone. Cort Wesley peeked over the counter to see Guillermo Paz barreling toward the shooting gallery in a massive, extended-cab pickup truck.

 
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    S AN A NTONIO
    Paz spun the truck into a whiplash turn that left its passenger side blocking the front of the shooting gallery, providing additional cover for Cort Wesley and Luke. Paz was firing out his open window with an M16 even then, still firing when he threw the truck’s door open and lunged out. In the same motion, he managed to hurl a second assault rifle up and over his truck, dropping it straight into Cort Wesley’s waiting hands. At near seven feet tall and all of three hundred pounds, Paz might have been the biggest man Cort Wesley had ever seen, but in moments like this he moved like a gazelle. His motions flowed in an eerie rhythm, as if thought and action had merged into one.
    His huge shoulders, encased