Caleb pounded away with his 10/22. The noise was a fraction of what the other guns projected, but his shot placements were nearly perfect. He’d been trained to shoot for the head, and he’d been trained well. A .22-caliber bullet might not have the greatest stopping power with center-of-mass shots, but it will scramble the shit out of a brain.

Ahead and to his right, two more members of the Grubbs gang fell from bullets fired by his team.

Over to the left, as the Grubbs gang pivoted to address the assault on their flank, George and Eric woke up and started stitching them from across the street. In less than one minute, it was over. The outgoing fire from Grubbs’s gang had dwindled to nothing.

“Cease fire!” McCrea yelled. “Cease fire, cease fire!” Then, remembering he had a civilian team, he yelled, “Stop shooting!”

After the final gunshot, the quiet was almost oppressive, made heavier by the ringing in his ears from all the noise.

“Everybody okay?” McCrea scanned his team, and all of them seemed to be fine, even if they didn’t answer.

“I’m fine,” Caleb said. He stooped to look at the body of one of the people he’d shot. “He’s no older than me.”

“You all right?” McCrea asked. The kid showed no emotion at all.

Caleb stood and did a tactical reload, dropping the used, yet-not-empty, twenty-round magazine from the well and replacing it with a full one from the front pocket of his jeans. “I’m fine,” he said. “I told you I could do it.”

McCrea watched, disturbed, as Caleb wandered to another of the people he’d killed. It was unsettling to see a total lack of . . . anything.

McCrea also wandered among the dead, scanning the carnage and wondering if this truly was the new normal for society. The gang’s bodies were scattered in a rough circle around a pile of gathered stuff. McCrea imagined that they had been in the middle of inventorying or maybe distributing their booty when the shooting started. He looked down at the corpse of the man who’d rushed him and died in the process. “Was it worth it?” he asked.

“Well, that was exciting!” George proclaimed as he joined McCrea from the other side of the street.

“What about you?” McCrea said. “This is what you wanted. Was it worth it?”

George recoiled. “What’s with you?”

Joey said, “This is the stuff they stole from my shop. Some of it, anyway.”

All McCrea could see was unnecessary risk and wasted lives. “Grab the stuff you want to take back with you and let’s get going.” He started to turn away, but George grabbed his arm.

“Feelin’ high-and-mighty, are you?” George said. He was pissed. “Seems to me, you was fightin’ with as much enthusiasm as anyone else.”