by Shawn Keys
Rebecca’s grip had indeed tightened, though more reflexively. But her expression was clouded with anger. “If you were that covert, then you didn’t have the DOJ’s full support, did you?”
Jackie scowled. “He knew where I was going. What’s the problem? You heard him! He’s supportive.”
Rebecca leaned in closer, “You promised me protection! But they don’t even know I need protection! You’re all alone in all this. I’m burnt in every way possible, and these people are going to be trying to kill me as of right now. How many forms are you gonna have to fill out to get me a protective detail and a placement at some safe house? Or a fake identity?”
Jackie took a long breath. “All of that is possible. Just stay with me, and I’ll ensure you get everything you need.”
“In 3-4 weeks?”
“Ye… no!” Jackie looked annoyed. “Urrgh. Look, don’t put words in my mouth. I’m taking responsibility for you.”
“What if your boss doesn’t see it the same way? You sold me on this like it was already a done deal! I might have killed someone back there! Do I have immunity? What the hell?”
Kyle cut in, “Stick with us.”
“What?” Rebecca glared at him. “You were part of this!”
Kyle shook his head. “I’m not an agent with the DOJ, Rebecca. I’m just some poor schmuck who got caught up in all this like you, just for having the wrong lab test come back negative. I didn’t make you any promises I wasn’t willing to back up. I mean it. Stick with us. We’re going to stay in contact with Jackie, here. If things go right, and they’re willing to give you a safe place to live, then great. You can turn yourself in and go with them. But if they fail, or they say anything you don’t like, or they don’t give you the deal you deserve, then you can stay with us.”
Jackie looked ready to object.
Kyle cut her off, “Don’t ask if I’m willing to defend a fugitive from justice. I don’t care what else Rebecca might have done. She stood shoulder to shoulder with me as we fired on those agents and then flew us the hell out of there. I’d say she’s proven about as much as anyone that she’s on our side.” He glanced back at Rebecca. “Won’t be easy. Might even get messy. But it’s a lot better to have a few allies while hiding out instead of being a lone target.”
Rebecca shook her head. “There’s things I need to do. I owe my father a visit.”
With a knowing, grim smile, Kyle said, “Might be willing to help you with that, too.”
Jackie held up a hand, trying to stop them. “I can’t be hearing this.”
A tense silence filled the air.
The crunch of tires made them all flinch, breaking the silence.
Kyle sat up, immediately regretting it as fresh pain lanced through him.
Soo-Yun tried to get him to stop. “If you move, it’s going to make it worse!”
He tried to keep his cool, though frustration made him growl. “I know, Soo-Yun. Are you done getting it out and stitching me up?”
She sighed, knowing she was fighting a losing battle. He wasn’t going to sit this one out, and she could tell. “Yes! You won’t bleed over your gun or anything.”
Hearing her sarcasm, Kyle flashed her a thankful smile, but didn’t stay. He tapped Chloe on the shoulder as he went by her, “Need your back-up.”
Chloe darted a look at Soo-Yun, who nodded. “Yes, I’ll finish up with Dazz.” Chloe nodded in gratitude, then trailed after Kyle, picking up her rifle along the way. Rebecca made sure Jackie was able to keep pressure on her wound, then grabbed her MP5 and went with them.
Together, they went through the front door and scattered over the covered porch out front. It was only a single truck finishing its drive up the long dirt-and-gravel lane leading in from the country road that cut by the ranch. Kyle leaned against the wood post nearest to the porch’s screen door exit, making sure his LWRC was cocked and loaded. The two women flanking him went to opposite ends, getting what cover they could behind other posts and the railings.
Rebecca called out, “Think it’s the Dawn?”
“Not unless they’re getting desperate.” Kyle jutted his chin at the approaching truck, which was a beaten-down pickup truck built somewhere before the turn of the millennium. Light blue-grey with more than enough rust to provide it character, it kicked out a puff of black smoke whenever it hit a pot-hole. “That isn’t exactly their normal sort of ride.”
Chloe chuckled, “Saw a sheriff down in Texas drive something like that around, but I think he was doing it ironically.”
The touch of humor helped keep them calm as the truck ground to a halt. For a long moment, the driver didn’t move, like he was weighing the ranch house for what sort of danger it posed. Then, the driver’s door opened. It was on the side away from them, giving the driver a bit of cover without really keeping him safe.
An older man emerged from behind the cab, standing tall on the other side of the hood. He had a double-barreled Winchester grasped in his arms, casual enough to show he didn’t mean to use it quite yet, but with a familiarity that suggested he could use it pretty damned well. His white beard and coarse skin suggested he was somewhere in his 60’s at least, though he didn’t look stooped or feeble. Clad in blue jeans and a dark-green collared shirt with a cowboy hat tossed over his head, he looked the perfect part for owning a ranch house. But something about the way he stood gave Kyle the impression that he wasn’t the owner coming home.
The man squinted up at the porch, picking them out through the shadowy screen. “Not sure who you are, but you’ve got about five seconds to tell me why you’re on this property before I deal with you my own way!”
Dark humor flickered through Kyle. If this was the old west, would it be fair for one claim-jumper to knock another one off the land? Taking a guess, Kyle yelled back, “You don’t own it. Why do you care, huh?”
The old man huffed. “Name’s Doug Ramston, son. I own the next lot over, and I promised to look after the place while the owners are off in the city. Could tell you why, but not in the mood. Not until you start talking sense.”
Kyle relaxed. Not a lot. The guy still had a gun and a good reason to use it. But he wasn’t coming for them, either. Not unless he was lying through his teeth. “We’re not here to steal anything, Sir. It’s been a hard couple of days, and we needed a place to dig in and keep our heads down.”
“Sir, now, is it?” Dough barked a laugh. “Don’t hear a lot of manners from young snots looking to cause mischief. You might have picked the wrong place to hunker down.”
“Don’t want to hurt anyone or anything, Sir. We’re just a little desperate, is all. We needed an empty place.”
“Ain’t nothing totally empty, son. Are you some nut? If you’re in trouble, then who’s after you?”
Kyle thumped his forehead against the post. “You would be better off not knowing. A whole heap of trouble is right over the horizon, and the last thing I want to do is drag you into all this.”
“You a criminal, son? I’m not going to let you squat here until the police have to come dig you out.”
Chloe hissed, “If he leaves, he’s going to call the cops! They’ll be on us in under an hour!”
Thinking fast, Kyle shouted back, “It’s a bloody long story, Sir! And not an easy one to believe. There’s someone in here who can convince you. She’s official. You could come in and talk, and she’ll tell you all about it.”
Doug barked a laugh. “I was born at night, son, but not last night.”
Kyle snorted a laugh, sort of liking the old guy. He clicked the safety into place on his LWRC. “What if I set down my gun?”
That caught him off-guard. “Huh?”
Kyle made a show of holding his rifle up, visible through the screen. He reached over and placed it firmly on the ledge so the weapon didn’t fall. He cared about it, especially since it was a gift. It had also kept him alive more than once, now. “There. That’s mine. I’m going to tell these other two to put down theirs as well. You keep yours.
Come in, and talk. See that we aren’t crazy. All we need is time.”
“No other guns in there?”
“Only one in anyone else’s hands is going to be the DOJ agent in here with us. You know cops don’t put down their guns. You alright with that?”
Doug grumbled, “She ain’t no cop. She’s government. Big difference.”
“Some rules are the same. Don’t ask her to toss off her service weapon, Doug. Work with me on this.”
He chewed at the tobacco in his mouth, then spot some onto the ground at his feet. “Alright. Go on, you other two. Show me your steel and then back away. Nice and slow.”
Kyle cheered him on, wanting him to get inside. They weren’t helpless, so he figured they’d be fine. Plus, Doug seemed like the kind of guy who’d rather handle his own matters rather than call the cops. He backed up, moving slow, giving Doug plenty of room to walk around his truck, climb the stairs and enter the covered porch. Doug let the screen door slam shut, never losing control of his own gun.
Doug scanned over them now, scouring them up and down. He couldn’t miss Kyle’s torn shirt and the wrapped bandages underneath. “Looks like you’re a little worse for wear, young man.”
Kyle nodded, fire burning up and down his side. “Like I said, been a long couple of days.”
The old man considered Chloe and Rebecca, unable to help himself from noticing their beauty, while the blood-spattered, torn-up, tactical-pattern clothing was a little distracting from such thoughts. “How many more in there?”
Chloe said, “Three more. Two injured, plus our Doc looking after them.”
“That so?” He spat a little more of his tobacco out, then gestured with his gun. “Alright. Let’s go see. Like I said, nice and slow.” He called out loud, aimed at the people inside, “We’re coming in. Give me any cause, and I’ll cut these three to pieces!”
They filed in, and Kyle was glad to see the others were all playing it cool. Even Dazz instantly flipping him any of her typical sass, but that was partly from the blood-loss and recent surgery to close her wound.
In the time they had been outside, Soo-Yun had finished the work on Dazz and moved on to sewing Jackie’s leg shut. A discarded needle was on the table nearby, suggesting the agent had been given a little pain relief before the minor operation started.
Keeping a half-eye on the first three, Doug swept his gaze around the room. Seeing the blood, used gauze and torn clothing, he whistled. “Holy crap. Where did you come from, a war zone?”
He accepted the chaotic scene with a sort of stoic acceptance that spoke to Kyle. “Have you been in a couple, Sir?”
The old man scowled. “Stop calling me that, son. I worked for a living. If you need to use something other than my name, call me Sergeant.”
“Army?”
“Bled green for over twenty years. Saw enough things like this.” He gestured at the house around them. “Too much like this, to be honest. Too many patch jobs done while hunkered down in someone else’s bombed-out home.” He evaluated each of the others in the room. “Which of you is the agent?”
Jackie gave him a cold smile. “DOJ Agent Jackie Moraker, Sergeant. Forgive me if I don’t show you my credentials.”
Doug barked another laugh. “Around these parts, being a Fed like that isn’t going to buy you a whole lot of love. Don’t figure you would claim to be one if you weren’t.” He settled a little. He didn’t put his gun down, but it felt like he eased off his hair trigger a little. “Alright, I see it. Good start, kid. Now why don’t you try telling me what this all about? Still doesn’t give you any right to highjack Bill’s place.”
“I get that, Doug.” Kyle fought past the instinct to use the man’s title. Something about the way the man had talked earlier had seemed like a challenge, as if daring Kyle to put himself on equal footing. If he had just been Kyle the high school student, then yeah, he should keep calling the guy Sergeant. But he wasn’t. He was Kyle, the leader of a resistance cell, partnering with a DOJ agent, with ten women who were counting on him and three children on the way who were as good as dead if he didn’t protect them. That’s who he was now, and he had to embrace that in everything he did. “Not trying to offer excuses. It’s just what needed to be done. Sorry to mix you up in all that. But if we had driven another few miles, we might have been dead. Either from bleeding or running into a new bunch of trouble, it was too much a risk.”
“Cops?”
“They’re helping, but they don’t know better. They’re being fed a pack of lies. Another reason we didn’t want to mix it up with them. All that would do is get a lot of innocent cops dead, even while we picked off the real guilty bastards in all this.”
“Oh?” Doug smirked. “This where you sell me on the nutty part?”
“Yeah.” Kyle chuckled. “Gets nuttier the longer you listen to it.” He pointed at Doug’s arm. “Involves the same people who jammed that transponder in your arm so they could track you every day of your life.”
Doug’s eyebrows rose. “You’re messing with the FDPC? You got some stones on you, don’t you?”
Again, Kyle couldn’t help a bitter laugh. “Not a lot happening to me seems to be a real choice. I’m just trying to stay ahead of them. They got all the fancy tools. All we have is the virtue of being small and off their grid.”
Doug nodded thoughtfully. “Alright. So, what did you do?”
“I guess I was born.” Kyle sighed, knowing that wasn’t helpful. It was blurted from a place of frustration. “It’s a long story, Doug. Seriously. Bad people want me dead because I’m not their kind of people. That’s the core of it. They want all these people dead because they were stupid enough to help me out.” He pointed at Rebecca. “Except her. They want her dead because she refused to become one of them. Everything else is window dressing.” He felt suddenly tired. “You want to hear it? Well, sit down and I’ll tell you all about it. Jut let me get off my feet, alright? Got shot earlier today, and I’m about to collapse.”
Not waiting for him to answer, Kyle stopped watching the guy all that close. He could feel the danger fading. None of them wanted to shoot each other. He lumbered over to the couch and sank back onto it with a deep groan of relief.
Soo-Yun glared at him, her concern for him making her anger spike. “I’ll come check your bandages once I’m done with Jackie. Probably tore all your stitches open!”
Kyle didn’t have the strength to argue. Feeling what might be a warm glow at knowing someone cared enough about him to act like that, he stayed settled.
Reading the same thing, Chloe offered, “If Bill is your friend, Sergeant… well, you could give me permission to raid his cupboards. Could make up some soup or something while we all talk?”
Like her friendly southern drawl could do with nearly anyone when combined with her pouty-lipped smile, Chloe’s offer charmed Doug a little further. “Hmph. Alright, darling. Though if you could grill a few ham and cheese sandwiches to go along with it, I’d be in your debt.”
Chloe’s smile was one of those that poets could write a few verses about: pure sunshine. “You bet.” She slipped away into the kitchen.
Rebecca settled into a chair, making Doug the only one still standing. She gestured at the cushioned chair near the exit. “Take a load off, Sergeant. Trust me, I’m going to want to hear this, too. I only know half the story myself.”
Kyle chuckled at that. “I don’t think any of us know the whole story. There’s too much going on. But we’ll tell you what we know, and hopefully enough to let us stay here for a while. Because I’m not lying. If we leave here? Well, I’m pretty sure we’d be dead by nightfall.”
He waited until Doug stepped in and perched cautiously on the chair. Then, he tried to figure out the best way to begin.
* * *
The compound of Yohannes Drake wasn’t really in any sub-division of Sacramento. It was large enough to earn its own separate consideration. Not quite its own zip-code, but not all that far off, either. The land felt even
larger, as it was right on the edge of town, facing up into hills that were too steep for large development. Even if the city kept spreading out, a dozen square miles beyond the rear fence of Drake’s compound would always be rough and wild.
Advancing on the compound in that way might have been tactically beneficial, but the terrain was broken and would also require a little reconnaissance to avoid getting hung up unexpectedly. Andrew Lark’s order had removed the available time for such things. For the same reasons, Dirk Crowder didn’t have precise guard timetables, camera layouts, or anything to aid in a ‘subtle’ approach.
What they did have was money and brute force.
The former was sufficient to purchase an artificial ‘swamping’ of the 9-1-1 emergency switchboard for the duration of one hour. Reports of gunfire would never be heard. Police response would be measured in hours, not minutes.
The latter would be a sufficient key to the compound and negate the need for stealth. Dirk didn’t fear that Drake would destroy what he wanted. The man’s evasive real estate deals were only the tip of the iceberg when it came to his shady business dealings. If Drake was going to start burning documents, Dirk was confident the man wouldn’t be starting with the locations of his various satellite properties.
Dirk was in the passenger seat of an armored bank vehicle as it plowed into the front gate of the compound. He was mildly impressed that there were four guards with machine guns protecting the front. He had only expected two. Perhaps it was a shift change? he wondered idly. Two of them went sprawling against the glass. The other two kept clear, but were gunned down by Zara Crane and her own assets. She was his opposite number from the California sector: no less cold, and no less efficient. Dirk trusted her to watch his back like that.