Reese laughed, despite his shaking hands, and reached for the sail bundle. He was tempted to let them drift on the current as long as possible, but at the crest of the wave generated by the ship, Reese looked up and saw the dark leading edge of the second half of the storm on the horizon. They didn't have much time before the hurricane would have them in its teeth once more.
"Yeah, that's a ride I never want to go on again,” he muttered to himself as he loosened the straps of the sail bundle. "But you might want to wait a little while before killing me."
"Oh? Why’s that? You’ve shown me such a good time since we left Maine—that was the best decision of my life," she said sarcastically, "leaving the Ranger station on Mount Desert Island. Probably could have been rescued by now…”
“Look over your shoulder," Reese said without turning around as he undid the bundle and placed the blunt end of the gaffes in the crook of the bow.
The quiet gasp behind him told Reese that she’d looked. "Remember what I said back at Fisherman Island a couple days ago? About going into harm's way?"
"Yeah…but something tells me I wish I didn’t…” Jo said behind him.
Reese glanced over his shoulder. "You might want to hold on, because we're about to sail into harm's way."
He spread the gaffes apart, and the wind coming in from the east immediately filled the tough Tyvek material they'd scavenged from the lifeboat escape pod. It snapped taut and pulled the gaffes upright. Reese grunted in pain and slammed both feet against the base of the improvised sail as it wedged itself into the bow. The two wires he’d attached to the sail bundle now became steering lines. He stretched himself out and leaned back in the boat, groaning in pain, and the lifeboat—now sailboat—surged forward over the crest of the next wave. Reese yelled in exhaustion and triumph, despite the fire in his arm and ribs.
"Next stop, Charleston!" he hollered as the increasing wind pushed them faster toward the shore.
"How do you steer this thing?" Jo hollered as they fishtailed across the harbor.
"Steer!?" Reese laughed. "I'm just trying to hang on!"
Chapter 23
Bee’s Landing Subdivision
Northwest of Charleston, South Carolina
Cisco smiled as he wiped the water from his face. It was time. Time to crush the troublesome neighborhood once and for all. Time to kill Flynt. Time to avenge Lopez. The smile faded from his face. Time to hunt down that brat and her mother, and make them pay, too.
“Anyone tries to fight back, take ‘em out,” he muttered over his shoulder. “No prisoners.”
“What do we do with anyone who gives up?” asked his squad leader, crouched beside him next to the bush that whipped in the wind.
“Round ‘em up in a house. There’s going to be plenty. We don’t want to kill everyone.”
“Somebody’s got to do the work when the storm’s over, right?”
Cisco turned and smiled. “Exactly.” His gaze fell on the rest of the men. “Listen up. Jenkins is out there somewhere that way,” he said, gesturing north. “He’s waiting for us to make the first move. We’re going to take that house, right there,” he said, pointing at the house next to Lavelle’s.
“Not that one?” his squad leader asked, pointing at Lavelle’s house, directly across the backyard, beyond a garden. “That’s where we had all the trouble. Ain’t that…her…house? Boss?”
Cisco frowned. “It is, but we’re not going to be stupid and go straight down their throats. Look at it, man…they built some kind of log fort or something off the corner. They’re ready for us and probably all waiting inside it right now.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah,” Cisco mocked. “Oh.” He sighed and wiped the water from his face again. “Look, we’re going to take that one,” he said, pointing at the neighbor’s house, the one that had been shot up in Flynt’s first raid, “because we can sneak up in the storm and get inside before anyone sees us. Then we’ll be ready to attack from a position they won’t be expecting. We’re also taking the house across the street—the one Flynt’s woman lives in.”
“Why?” Asked one of the others over the wind that roared like a freight train.
“Because we’ll be able to hit them from two angles at once, you moron!” Cisco grabbed his lieutenant by the collar of his soaking wet shirt. “Split up—take the first four men. Go. Take that house. No shooting, just get inside and lie low. When I start shooting, you open up.”
“O-okay, boss,” the man stuttered.
“You guys,” he said to the other four men, “you’re with me. Let’s go.” Cisco shoved his way through the bushes and didn’t look to see if anyone followed him. He ran across the lawn through the cover of the storm and made it to the house he remembered attacking with Flynt. It seemed like a lifetime ago. So much had changed in the two weeks since that attack.
He crouched by the corner closest to the forest and waited for the rest of the group to catch up. As he watched, he saw his squad leader stack up his group behind Cisco’s. The men around him wrinkled their noses.
“You smell that?” one yelled.
“Smells like gas!”
“Shut up and get in there!” Cisco growled. “There’s probably dead bodies in there—it was some old man that lived here.”
“But—”
“Go!” Cisco said. He motioned for his team to follow and sprinted across the street. He didn’t have time to argue over smells in the middle of the hurricane. This whole neighborhood was going to smell pretty bad when he was done with it.
Cisco didn’t stop running till he made it to the line of trees along the driveway to the target house. He ducked behind the trees to shelter himself from the wind and kept running, sprint after sprint, until his lungs burned and his legs threatened to give out. But he made it—and so did his team—to the house.
Gasping, but refusing to put his hands on his knees like the others, he pulled them around the side of the house to get out of the worst of the wind. “We need to get inside—quietly!” He grabbed the closest man by the shoulder and shoved him forward toward the patio door.
He grinned and nodded, then scrambled up onto the deck and approached the sliding door. He raised his rifle to smash the window, then caught sight of Cisco’s face and lowered the weapon. He tried the handle and when the door opened an inch, he grinned and waved the others forward.
Inside, with the storm locked out, Cisco leaned against a wall and let the water drip from his skin as he relished the relative quiet of the empty house. At least it sounded empty. “You and you,” he whispered to half his team. “Get upstairs and make sure we’re alone.” He turned to the others. “You go stand by the front door, and you stay here.”
With his team divided up, Cisco went about looking through the windows on the ground floor to find the best view of Lavelle’s house. The shrubs and trees that lined the driveway, all dancing and swirling in the wind and rain, obscured his view too much, so he waited impatiently for his scouts to return.
“All ours, boss,” said the first as he plodded down the main stairs, leaving mud and water stains on the carpet.
“Yep, totally empty,” added the second scout.
Cisco nodded. “Good,” he said in a normal voice. The house felt like a tomb, dark and muffled. It groaned under the pressure of the wind, and studs and beams popped and creaked as the house was buffeted by the wind. He didn’t want to unnerve his men by whispering. They had work to do and didn’t need to be distracted with superstitious fears.
“See what you can find in here that’s useful—supplies, food, ammo…anything. I’m going upstairs to find a good overwatch spot.”
Alone at last upstairs, Cisco searched the bedrooms and found what he was looking for in what appeared to be a home office. He rushed to the window, shoved the fancy bookshelf out of the way, and ignored the mess he created, planting his heavy, muddy boots directly on the books now scattered on the floor. He narrowed his eyes and peered out the rain-streaked window.
“Soon…” he muttered to himself.
A whoop from downstairs startled him. He turned from the window and yelled. “What is it?”
Heavy footsteps thudded up the stairs as someone came to report. “Boss! We found all kinds of stuff! It’s out in the garage…food, tools, backpacks just full of stuff!”
“We’re rich!” someone hooted from another part of the house.
Cisco grinned. “Everybody get some food, and bring some up here to me,” he ordered.
“You got it, jefe!” The man in front of him said with a sloppy salute. He turned and ran out of the room, then thudded his way back downstairs.
Cisco returned to his observation post and watched the storm rage outside. One of the trees along the driveway looked about ready to give up the fight. It leaned drunkenly across the open space and shuddered with every gust of wind that rocketed through the property. Sheets of rain occasionally obscured his vision.
“It’s time,” he muttered to himself. His fingers tingled, and this time he was sure it wasn’t because he was hungry or tired. He felt so alive, so full of energy.
As he watched, the house next door to Lavelle’s, where his lieutenant had taken half his squad, disappeared in a ball of orange. A muffled CRUMP echoed in the distance, and the rain—driven by the wind into blinding, horizontal sheets—formed a dome of white steam and spread impossibly fast into the air, briefly pushing the storm back.
In less than the time it took his heart to beat once, the blast wave hit and the neighbor’s house flew into the air like an immense swarm of insects, swallowed by an expanding orange-red fireball that chased the much faster dome of overpressure. Then the storm returned with a vengeance and swallowed it all.
The window in front of Cisco shattered and the force of the shockwave knocked him off his feet like someone had hit him point blank with a shotgun. For the first time in close to 24 hours, the roar he heard wasn’t the wind[MP13].
Cisco lay on the floor gasping for breath and wished it had only been the wind. Finally his lungs caught up with his brain and he sucked in his fill of rain-soaked air. Cisco screamed. His face was on fire[MP14], peppered with tiny dagger-like fragments of the window that had shattered in his face. The wind blew papers and curtains all around the room, and his men screamed and hollered somewhere in the house.
By the time Cisco pulled himself to his hands and knees, one of his squad was there in the room, stupidly asking if he was okay. “Do I look okay, puta? Help me up!”
Chapter 24
Lavelle Homestead
Bee’s Landing Subdivision
Northwest of Charleston, South Carolina
Darien picked himself up off the kitchen table and shook his head, but it didn’t stop the ringing in his ears. The light fixture hanging from the ceiling swayed side to side. He coughed. It had been like all the air had been sucked out of his lungs.
“What the hell was that?”
Mitch picked himself up off the floor and looked around with wide eyes. “Was that a tornado? I heard hurricanes spawn lots of little tornados…”
“That wasn’t any tornado I’ve ever seen,” Darien said as he moved closer to the plywood-covered window over the sink. He peered through the splintered gap in the wood. The entire window was gone.
So was Marty’s house.
Amber skidded to a stop in the kitchen behind him. “Did you—Mitch! You’re bleeding!”
Darien turned and looked at the kids. Mitch was bleeding—a lot. It ran down the side of his head in a red sheet. “What cut you?”
“Is that glass?” Amber asked as she examined his face. “It is! Don’t move, I need to get that out before it gets in your eyes.”
“It doesn’t even hurt,” Mitch argued. He raised a hand to wipe the blood from his cheek. He glanced at the floor. “I guess my face hit one of the pictures on the wall…”
“Don’t!” Amber ordered. “Let me—we don’t need you making it worse.”
“What happened?” asked Rufus as he entered the room from the hallway leading toward the old man’s nursery.
“Marty’s house just blew up,” Darien reported. He turned back to the window. Through the wind and rain of the storm’s second half, he saw the remains of the old geezer’s house. Fire stubbornly fought the watery onslaught. Blackened studs around the edge of the house stuck up through the roof that had collapsed onto the ground floor. Debris littered the side yard, and an entire wall of cinderblock and brick had crushed the back deck on Lavelle’s house. He could just see the corner of the redoubt from the kitchen window, but it looked secure.
“Where are you going?” asked Mitch as Darien moved past him.
“I’m going into the laundry room—need to check on the redoubt.” He left the younger man to Amber’s care and sent Rufus to report to Marty. In the laundry room, Darien found the plywood that covered the window in the door warped in and rain and wind whistled into the narrow room. Water pooled on the floor, pushed in by the storm. The blast had shattered the window, but the plywood held firm—barely[MP15].
He stepped through the puddles of rainwater and placed a hand on the door. It shivered and vibrated with the force of the wind, and the noise drowned out everything else as he stood there. But he had to know. He had to see.
Darien braced his shoulder against the door and unlocked the deadbolt. As soon as he turned the knob, the wind shoved it in, nearly knocking him off his feet and sending bits of broken glass skittering across the floor. He growled and strained but held the door firm and managed to sneak a peek into the log redoubt they’d constructed at the corner of the house. He made sure to position it so that the defenders could get in and out of the house without breaking cover, so it was anchored to the wall on one side with the laundry room door smack in the middle.
The redoubt looked intact. A chunk of smoking roof lay against the inside wall, complete with curled shingles melted into a tarry mass, still attached to plywood and a chuck of framing timber. Other than that, the defensive structure looked serviceable. Satisfied, Darien leaned back in and put all his strength into shutting the door against the wind. By the time he threw the deadbolt home and stepped back, he was panting for breath and his arms quivered with exertion.
The house groaned and beams cracked and popped under the wrath of the hurricane, but thankfully they hadn’t lost the roof. The plywood covering the windows had saved countless injuries so far, and overall, the house was in decent shape. Darien grinned.
He made his way back to the kitchen, making sure to scrape off the glass that clung to the bottom of his boots, and rejoined the others. Mitch was seated at the table and had a bandage around his forehead. Amber cleaned her hands and picked up the wrappers from her triage. Mia, the mom, was with her two kids. His own men were still at their posts, guarding the front door, the living room, the garage, and the upstairs windows.
“Oh, hey, Marty wants to see you,” Mitch said as he looked up from the table. He had a dazed look on his face, as if it were hard to focus his eyes on anything.
“I figured he would,” Darien said lightly. “The redoubt’s still holding strong. When Cisco gets here, we’ll be in pretty good shape.”
Amber turned, her hands wrapped in a kitchen towel. “What about John Douglass and Gary?”
Darien shook his head. “If they went off into the woods looking for your mom, they wouldn’t have been anywhere near that house when it blew.”
Mia wrapped her arms around her two kids, who looked like scared rabbits. “Why—what made Marty’s house blow up like that? It sounded like someone dropped a bomb on it!”
Darien shrugged. “I have no idea. But we need to go on high alert in case Cisco had something to do with it. I want everyone armed—you should get th
e kids to the safe room.”
Mia nodded and ushered her children toward the stairs. “Let’s go, hurry! Upstairs to the fort.”
“You really think he’d attack right now?” asked Amber as she peered out the slit in the kitchen window.
“It’d be a perfect distraction,” Darien mused. “We’re all looking over there…” he turned abruptly. “Jon Boy!”
“Yeah?” a voice bellowed from the front of the house.
“Keep a close watch, now—I think the bad men may be getting ready to come at us.”
“You got it, Mr. Darien!” the gentle giant said with the beaming smile of a ten-year-old.
“Marty—“ began Mitch.
Darien raised a hand. “I know, I know. I’ll get to him. Something’s off here…I don’t like this.” He turned when Rufus entered the room, his AR at the ready.
“You got something?”
Darien frowned. “Just a hunch. Keep a lookout, will ya?” He headed down the hall to the living room where the old man waited impatiently. “Oh,” Darien called over his shoulder. “Would you have someone keep an eye on the laundry room? Just in case we need to get outside, quick, you know?”
“On it,” Rufus replied. He moved toward the front room and called out orders to cover the laundry room.
Darien moved into the darkened living room and took a knee next to the old man, stretched out on some blankets on the floor. A palsied hand lifted into the air on his approach and Darien took the bony, paper thin appendage in his own bear paw.
“What was it?” Marty wheezed.
Darien leaned over. “Your house…I’m sorry, I think it blew up.”
Instead of whimpering or complaining about all of his possessions—now spread halfway across the county—the old man grinned. Maybe it was a grimace. In the dim light it was hard for Darien to tell. “Hope it took a few of them with it.”
Darien frowned. “Few of—I’m not following you…”
The old man turned his head and light reflected off his rheumy eyes. “Rigged a little surprise for anyone who tried to break in…”
Broken Tide | Book 5 | Storm Surge Page 18