by Rhona Weaver
Like it isn’t already?
“Get back to Luke before the smoke clears. Go! I’m covering you!” Johnson bellowed. He fired a couple of shots, drawing the bad guy’s return fire, as Win sprinted back through the cloud of black smoke and cleared the top of their little ditch.
The satellite phone buzzed just as he slid down the dirt bank. Win pulled it free of his vest and punched the connection on. It was Commander Phillips.
“HR-1 to FBIY-2. Win, you copy?”
“FB-2 . . . here, I copy!” He stammered as he tried to catch his breath. His radio protocol was falling apart under the stress.
“What the hell just happened?” Phillips asked. “We just picked up a significant anomaly on our security sensors down here in West Yellowstone.”
They could pick up the big explosion on their whiz-bang, high-tech sensors forty miles away, but they couldn’t get some good old-fashioned boots on the ground to back them up! Win was angry and his answer showed it. “They blew up the lodge. We got the people out by the skin of our teeth! Where is HRT!”
“Calm down . . .”
Calm down? Calm down! He wants me to calm down!
“Sounds like it’s a little hairy up there. . . . Their ETA is 1715 to 1720, maybe twenty minutes out. The choppers are having to dodge some weather—thunderstorms. What’s your status? Do they still have hostages?”
“Ten-four. There are two dead subjects, one’s a deputy sheriff. We have a militiaman wounded and a security guy wounded—neither wound appears life-threatening. Ten hostages we know of, they’re being held by Chandler’s men in the guardhouse. Haven’t located six of the security team. We have a truce with four of the militiamen. They are protecting the freed hostages near the stables, well over fifty people. Running low on ammunition.”
“Did you say ‘truce’?”
“Yes, sir.” Win was sure Phillips was closing his eyes and shaking his head in disbelief.
“Make sure none of them are armed when our guys land—our boys will be coming in hot. We’ll sort it out when we get the situation under control. Copy that?”
“Roger.”
“Since they’ve got hostages, you’ve got to keep them contained.” Phillips paused for a second. “Who’s actually running your operation there?”
“We put Bordeaux in charge, sir.”
The HRT commander considered that for a moment. “Probably smart, considering everything. Win, keep them contained until our team gets there.”
“Roger that. FBIY-2 out.”
Luke had appeared and eased closer to him in the ditch. Win started to speak, but Luke put up a hand. “I overheard it. What if Brother King doesn’t want to be contained? He’s still got us outnumbered by my count. He’ll figure your boys are comin’.”
“Uh, just to be real clear . . . your plan . . . that is containment?” Win asked haltingly.
Luke’s eyes were bright. He raised his eyebrows slightly and flashed a cagey smile. “Active containment, boy. We can contain them a damn sight better if they ain’t shootin’ at us or killin’ hostages.”
Win couldn’t argue with that. It was obvious Luke feared the bad guys were fixing to make a bold move. Evidently he was an aficionado of the “take them out, before they take you out” notion of combat.
Luke checked the cartridge caliber in the security guard’s extra magazines and then handed one of the fresh magazines to Win. He glanced over at Trey. “We’re just waiting on Trey to get the lead out . . .”
Trey shot Luke a humorless grin as he finished up the bandage on the security guard. The man seemed to be improving, but he was in no condition to help them. Trey had removed the guy’s mobile radio and laid it beside him. It suddenly crackled to life. “Copy? Do you copy? This is Watson.”
Win grabbed it and hit the mic. “This is Win—I copy. Your man is being treated. He’ll be okay. We could use some more backup over here.”
“I’m a little shorthanded myself right now. Uh, your gal . . . Ms. Stuart? She informed our allies that none of them would ever see the light of day again after HRT got here in a few minutes and shipped them all off to federal prison.” Win could hear him sigh. “Not the best timing.”
Win’s heart sank. He hit the mic. “Sooo . . .”
Watson clicked in and interrupted. “They got her weapons—I’m shocked they didn’t shoot her—but apparently they don’t shoot women. Even stupid ones. They just cuffed her to a pole in the stable. Anyway, they faced me down and I told them I’d stay and guard the partygoers. That’s all I was paid to do. It coulda got real bad. But they left—said the truce was only on till they got the innocents out safely. That’s how the big guy put it.”
Well, that is just great! They could rejoin the bad guys! “What’s their twenty?”
“Heard one of them say they were going home. They took their wounded man with them and headed into the woods to the southeast. I doubt they’ll rejoin the fight.”
Hope not! “Roger that. You stay there and keep everyone in the stable. Can you get Emily free?”
“Maybe, maybe not. I’m not in the mood to look too hard for a handcuff key.”
Win understood his sentiments entirely.
* * *
Trey made it over to Johnson’s position, but only after all of them laid down heavy cover fire on the front of the guardhouse. The lodge fire was burning fiercely, and another section of the log wall crashed down, but the smoke was now blowing away from them. They could no longer use it for concealment. Brother King, as Luke kept calling Ron Chandler, still had at least six heavily armed gunmen plus Prophet Shepherd, and near as they could tell, they were all holed up in that one-story rock building.
As Win followed Luke down the ditch, Win replayed Watson’s layout of the guardhouse over and over in his head. The crude drawing had shown a double doorway into a reception area, which separated two large front rooms. Those rooms contained the communications equipment and monitors and a ready room with separate offices. The rear of the building consisted of a large equipment room, a break room with lockers, and a two-bedroom apartment. Not your basic guard shack. The front of the building, facing what remained of the lodge, had a covered stone patio with large rock columns. Win’s job was to neutralize, as Luke put it, the gunmen stationed there and to clear the two front rooms.
Win crouched low and gingerly moved down the narrow, rock-strewn ravine. His rifle was in his right hand and his left hand touched the sandy side of the narrow ditch for balance. The old Kevlar vest, which was fitted with ceramic plates, was heavy and cumbersome. It weighed more than thirty pounds, and it kept him from bending freely at the waist and threw him slightly off-balance. But he’d seen the damage done by the 5.56mm bullets that hit the security guard’s newer body armor—the guy was down . . . but not dead. The weight and lack of flexibility were nuisances, but he’d take the protection over the annoyances any day.
Luke signaled him down with his left hand, and as soon as Win slumped into the dirt wall, Luke edged back up the ditch beside him. “Security building is just ahead of us,” he reported softly. “This ditch cuts right behind it. We’ve got three minutes before Johnson and Trey open up on them to give us cover.”
They lay there in silence for about a minute, and it occurred to Win that Luke was likely continuing to cover his back because of his promise to protect Luke’s family. That would explain why the man would risk his own life to save Win’s—Luke didn’t know that promise had long since been handled with reams of Bureau paperwork. Win suddenly felt guilty for keeping it from him.
“I took care of Ellie and the kids with the Bureau days ago, Luke. You don’t have to worry about that anymore. If something happens to me, it will stand. . . . They’ll be okay. The poaching and firearms charges will be dropped, and they don’t have anything on you for shooting Bronte. You, uh, you don’t have a dog in this fight. You don’t have t
o risk this—to keep me alive. You can just disappear and go home. No one will blame you.”
“You think you’re with me ’cause I’m lookin’ out for you?”
“Why else? Trey’s got the tactical training—”
“Trey’s a healer. He’s got a gentle spirit . . . more of a peacemaker.”
Win was a little offended and a whole lot puzzled. “So what’s that make me?”
“You? You don’t quite know it yet, but you’re a fighter. There’s no backing down in you. You’re still a work in progress, I’ll give you that, but you’re with me ’cause you’ll pin your ears back and keep goin’ after ’em.”
Whoa. So Luke can see it too. His spirit soared for a moment, then he got real—they were gonna try to rescue those hostages before Chandler had them killed. Just the two of them against at least eight men, and it wasn’t gonna be pretty and they might not succeed. Luke had concluded it was do or die. And it could very well be do and die.
Alright, then.
Luke was suddenly talkative. He was lying real close to Win against the ditch wall. He spoke in a low voice. “Your word to me, to take care of my family, as important as that was early on . . . it wasn’t the big thing in me decidin’ to get back in this last night. Gotta be able to look at myself in the mirror every mornin’. Here I’d trained and worked with men who were goin’ on a damn killing spree. Woulda never have been a part of that—just wanted to be a part of somethin’ positive, and it come to this. . . . Knew there’d be hell to pay as it went along.” He paused and looked up toward the blowing gray clouds. “What it come down to was my values—my faith. I couldn’t let you die over on that mountain iffen there was any way to stop it, no more than I kin let these innocent folks die if there’s anything I kin do about it. If I don’t come out of this . . . well, I want my kids to be able to say I was a good man . . . that I done my duty.” He took a deep breath and kept staring up into the unsettled sky.
They lay there in silence for another several seconds. Win thanked God for getting them this far and said his final prayer again. He was thinking it might be lingering shock or a lack of sleep, but in addition to the relief he felt after coming clean with Luke, he felt no fear of the coming firefight. He shifted slightly on the sandy slope to keep the wind from blowing dust into his face. “Luke, I don’t have the words to thank you for this morning . . . and I’m sorry I swore at you.”
“You thought I was fixin’ to blow your head off.” Luke turned his face toward Win and grinned a little. “No problem, you were angry.”
“Angry and afraid. Thought you’d betrayed me.”
“You had to believe I was gonna kill you or it wouldn’t have worked. And just so you know, I come close to movin’ to the other side after that meetin’ with HRT—awfully close. But I didn’t know they’d taken you till Trey called me at midnight from Mammoth. Figured where they’d go, and got to Prophet’s camp ’bout a hour ahead of you and the boys. I didn’t know anything about this plan till I got there.” He took another breath. “Can’t even imagine what you’ve gone through. I admire your courage. I was scared I couldn’t pull it off this morning—God’s provision fer both of us.”
Win laid his head back against the hard sand. He was humbled Luke thought he was a warrior—that he had courage. He’d never gone into battle, but he was also thinking it might be a bad sign that they both seemed to want to confess everything to each other.
“Luke, if we get out of this alive, I’d like to take you and Trey fishing,” Win said.
The man kept his face to the sky and smiled. “Alright, that sounds real good. When, not if, we get out of this, we’ll take them fish and have us a fish fry at my place. Kids, and wives, and all.” Something made him frown at the thought of that, and he added, “Need to find you a girl, though. We’ll have to work on that.”
The beep from Luke’s watch was barely audible. Time was up. Win took a deep breath and closed his eyes tight for just a second. He said, “Remember, this isn’t Afghanistan, this is an FBI operation. We have to give them a chance to surrender if they aren’t actively engaging us. We have to identify ourselves.”
Luke met Win’s eyes. “Yeah, I’m thinkin’ they know we’re with the Feds at this point. You take the guy out in front. I’m takin’ the guy out in the back . . . then comes the challengin’ part. Use your handgun in close quarters.” He took a final long breath. “Here we go.” He said it quietly, but with firm resolution. “Let’s show ’em how southern boys can fight.”
Chapter Forty-Three
The borrowed Sig Sauer handgun jammed as Win pulled the trigger. The man in camouflage was less than two yards in front on him, behind a rock column at the front of the guardhouse. The guy had just fired a burst back toward Trey and Johnson, and his clean-cut face registered shock as he swung the AR-15 toward Win. Win hit him square in the chest with 2.3 pounds of useless pistol, and went for his knife as the man staggered back from the blow. They went down together in a heap on the guardhouse porch, the man using the rifle as a brace to block Win’s attack. Win got him with an elbow to his jaw as they rolled, and the assault rifle dropped to the porch’s concrete floor. Gunfire was coming from somewhere close, but Win was so focused on his struggling foe that he never looked up. The guy had both hands around Win’s right wrist, trying to slow the steady drop of the black commando knife. Win was bigger and stronger—the outcome wasn’t in doubt.
“Don’t kill me! Don’t kill me!” the frightened voice whispered—it jolted Win back from the rage enveloping him. He willed the knife to stop its descent inches above the man’s throat. He saw the fear in the wide blue eyes below him.
“You’re under arrest—FBI! I wasn’t gonna kill you!” Yes, I was, damn it! He forced himself to draw in a breath. Get a grip, Win! What are you doing! His left hand pulled the man’s handgun from its holster. A Glock. Better armed than I was. He recognized the man as the militia’s corporal, Jeffery Shaw, just as another burst of gunfire erupted from somewhere nearby. Fragments from the concrete floor stung Win as he rolled off the prone fighter and sent several rounds from the Glock back toward the two muzzle blasts inside the guardhouse. Now he knew why the Bureau put such emphasis on shooting with either hand—his left-handed shots brought a garbled cry from someone inside the doorway. He scooted behind the rock column and sent two more rounds toward the location of the shooters as he sheathed his knife and realized he no longer had possession of his prisoner.
“I’m shot . . . I’m shot.” Why is the guy still whispering? Win fired again through the open doorway as he crawled across the concrete, grabbed Jeffery’s coat sleeve, and dragged him and the rifle back to cover. A trail of blood followed the man’s boots across the bullet-pocked porch. He pulled the younger man into a sitting position behind the column as a retreating shooter sprayed it with bullets. Several volleys of gunfire erupted from the rear of the building as he turned his attention back to his wounded captive.
“Where you hit?” The fear in the man’s eyes had been replaced by panic. Win absently wondered how many Bureau rules that were meant to protect him he was breaking as he pushed the guy back into the rock pillar and began checking him for wounds. Protocol required handcuffing the subject and leaving him for a medic to deal with later. The problem was they had no medic and the guy would probably bleed to death before anyone arrived to help them. The motto “First, do no harm” floated through his mind—not the Bureau’s motto, but it seemed to apply.
“Help me! My leg . . . my leg! . . . It hurts bad, real bad!” The guy was gasping for air through clenched teeth.
“Okay, be still. Put your hands behind your head.” Win kept shifting his eyes between the captive and the threat in the guardhouse.
The young man groaned. “Why? It hurts bad!” He was bent forward with both hands still grasping at his wounded leg.
“Just do it! Will make me feel better, okay? Do it!”
Win stole another glance toward the shooter’s location, stuffed the pistol in his web belt, and pulled the knife again. He slit the lower part of Jeffery’s blood-soaked pants leg. The guy was bleeding heavily from what looked to be two places in his calf and one just above his knee. The gunfire in the distance, on the far side of the building, had become sporadic, but Trey and Johnson were still firing single shots toward the guardhouse, giving Win cover while conserving ammunition.
The ranger’s first aid pouch contained the same basic medical essentials Win had spent all of two hours learning about at Quantico. He sprayed the clotting solution on the militiaman’s three wounds and applied a combat tourniquet above the highest wound above his knee. Win dragged an overturned lawn chair over to them, eased the man onto his back, and used the chair to prop the wounded leg up above his heart level. Jeffery gritted his teeth and struggled to keep his hands locked behind his head as the pain from the leg’s movements hit him.
Okay, cuff him and move on—no, someone has to release the tourniquet every ten minutes or his leg can be permanently damaged . . . geez. Win was no medic, but he remembered what he’d read.
“I don’t wanna die. Do . . . do you know what you’re doing?” the militiaman whispered.
“No, but I’m trying. Okay?”
“You’re FBI. . . . You guys can do anything, right?” His voice wavered, and he winced as the pain hit him again.
“You watch too much TV—or you got us mixed up with the park rangers. Apparently they can do anything!” Win made a final adjustment to the tourniquet, wiped his bloody hands on his pants, and sat back on his heels. Time to switch gears.
“Listen to me, Jeffery! Look at me!” The militiaman’s wide eyes met his; he was blinking back tears from the pain. “If I handcuff you behind your back, like I ought to, you won’t be able to release that tourniquet. It has to be released for three minutes every ten minutes. You got that? You got a watch? Okay—check it. I’m gonna cuff you in front so you can help yourself here—you don’t want to lose that leg or bleed out. Wait nine more minutes, then release it for three. Got that?” Win slapped his metal cuffs on the man’s wrists as loose as they would go. The guy was still gasping for breath, but he nodded that he understood.