by N. C. Reed
“I can't be both?” Peyton asked as he moved toward where Gordon and Clay were standing. As he did, a half-dozen men began following.
“Right there's good,” Clay called out to them, his off-hand rising to point at them. “He didn't invite you over here, just the Investigator.”
Peyton held up a hand and the men stopped. All of them looked little better than thugs, but every one had a badge pinned to him somewhere.
“This is all wrong,” Clay muttered to his father. “No way that bunch are cops.”
“I know,” Gordon muttered. “But what do we do now?”
“Tommy, you got eyes on?”
“Roger that,” Thompson replied at once. “Without the leaves, I can see fine.”
“Dial-in the big man that's walking this way and keep him there,” Clay ordered just as Peyton reached earshot.
“On it.”
“Nice rig, Clayton,” Tobias Peyton noted. “Mind if I have a look?” he held out a hand.
“Yes.” The reply was flat and final.
“I see,” Peyton frowned a bit but then smiled again as he looked at Gordon. “Gordon, how are you all making it?”
“We're getting by I guess,” Gordon shrugged. “Trying to at any rate.”
“Reverend Williams said you all brought in some food to help out the people that were burned out in Peabody,” Peyton nodded. “That was a nice gesture, Gordon. I think everyone appreciated that.”
“Just took what we could,” Gordon was non-committal. “Probably end up going a little hungry over it ourselves 'fore winter's over, but. . .man has to help out as he can.”
“So, he does,” Peyton nodded. “I guess since you helped them you heard about what happened in town?”
“Heard there was a bad fire,” Gordon nodded. “Some violence as well, though not how things started. Or ended for that matter. Ain't had no other news. I take it you know what happened, being as you're still moving around and got a small army behind you.”
“Well, it's true we had some trouble a few days after the lights went out,” Peyton agreed. “Managed to get it under control eventually but. . .the fire,” he shook his head. “Without water pressure, we had to depend on what little the trucks could carry, and then refill them from streams and ponds. It was a mess for sure. Lot of the town lost. Lot of people dead.”
“Sad day,” Gordon sighed. “I'm sorry to hear that.”
“We managed to get things under some semblance of control but. . .had a bit of trouble a few nights ago, again.”
“Trouble?” Gordon was doing a credible acting job, but Clay was certain that somehow, Peyton knew something, or at least had an excellent suspicion.
“Group of men came storming into town in military vehicles, shooting up what was left of town,” Peyton nodded. “Killed quite a few men, including some deputies. Attacked our temporary holding facility out at the shoe factory and freed every prisoner in the place after killing the staff.”
“You're kidding,” Gordon's mouth dropped open. “What the hell for?”
“I'm curious about it myself,” Peyton shrugged. “Seems they took several women with them when they ran out. We found a few of them at the church in fact,” he pointed to the car that stayed in the road. Clay could see at least five frightened faces sitting in that car.
“Well, at least they weren't harmed,” Gordon sighed in evident relief. “But if they were at the church, why did you take 'em from there?”
“Well, they're witnesses to the crime,” Peyton sounded like he regretted the whole thing. “I 'll have to hold them until I can catch the attackers and get them behind bars.”
“Since when do we arrest or hold witnesses in this country, Toby?” Gordon all but demanded. “That sounds like bullshit to me. And I thought you were better than a bullshitter.”
“Well, since things changed,” Peyton remained affable. “Can't just call 'em up to testify, now can I? Which leads me to my next problem,” he returned to sounding regretful. “Your grand-daughter was one of them.”
“One of them, what?” Gordon frowned.
“She came running into town earlier that night and crashed her car. Drinking and driving I'm sad to tell you,” he shook his head, really putting on the act.
“Enemy moving,” Clay heard Thompson report in his ear.
“Engaging,” A one-word whisper from Nolan followed.
“My grand-daughter, drinking and driving?” Gordon was losing his cool finally and Clay figured that was Peyton's play all along. “You 'll have to excuse me for saying so, Toby, but that's a damn lie.” The men arrayed behind Peyton stirred but remained where they were.
“One down,” Maseo's voice was soft.
“Now Gordon, I know you don't want to believe it, no one does,” Peyton stuck to his act, looking at his watch as he did. “But those are the facts. She was being held until she sobered up, kept separate from the others on account of our friendship, but she was taken from jail along with the others. I came to take her back. Won't charge her probably, but. . .she's still a witness.”
“One down.”
“One down.”
“You'll burn in hell before you take my grand-daughter off this farm Tobias Peyton,” Gordon lost what was left of his cool.
“One down.”
“Gordon, don't let your temper get you into trouble,” Peyton tried to sound like a friend. “I don't know if you heard, but Beldon was killed early on in the troubles. I'm the sheriff for now and have the full backing of the town council and the county commission. And your grand-daughter is a material witness as well as a criminal offender.”
“One down.”
“One down.”
“You're a liar, Toby,” Gordon said simply. “A damn no-good, two-face, back stabbing son-of-a-bitch liar at that! You know damn well my grand-daughter wasn't drinking! Why you chose to make that up I don't know, but I do know that you aren't taking her with you when you leave, and you are leaving! Now get your little degenerate posse together and get the hell off my property. All of you!” he shouted this time. The men behind Peyton started forward at a wave from him.
“I'm sorry it came to this, Gordon.”
“You're gonna be a lot sorrier if they come any closer,” Clay told him, smirking. He had yet to raise his rifle.
“One down.”
“One down.”
“Assuming you know how to use that rifle, and I do,” Peyton nodded, “you are severely outnumbered and outgunned. The best thing you can do is stand down. This won't be like the diner, boy.”
“One down. Field clear. Moving.”
“You're right, it won't,” Clay nodded. “Check your shirt,” he nodded. Frowning at the apparent non-sequitur, Peyton looked at his shirt and then did a double take.
There was a nickel sized green dot hovering right over his heart.
“That laser is attached to a Barrett Rifle,” Clay took great satisfaction in saying. “I'm sure you know what that is. And the man aiming it at you has absolutely no problem pulling the trigger. Assuming you want to live, and I do, you're going to do two things. One, you're going to free those women and have them escorted over here to safety. Two you're going to get your ass in that car and leave, never to return. Neither of those things are negotiable. Are we clear?” Clay asked as Peyton's face took on a look of fury.
“You're making a mistake, Clayton Sanders,” Peyton told him. “And your man is about to have trouble of his own.”
“If you're talking about the nine men you dumped east of here, then I hate to tell you but they're all dead,” Clay dropped the boom without fanfare or drama. “Anyone attacking this farm will meet the same fate, sheriff,” he made the word sound like a slur. “Now I'm getting tired of waiting. I need to see those women on their way over here, and I need to see your thugs loading up. And I need to see it soon, because I don't have a lot of patience this morning.”
Before Peyton could reply, Clay saw one of the men behind him level a rifle at Gordon. Reacting w
ithout a thought, Clay shoved his father to the ground even as he raised his own rifle.
“Take 'em!” he called as he triggered his rifle into the group behind Peyton.
Gunfire erupted all around Gordon while he hugged the ground as if it were a long-lost lover. Above him his son was shooting at the men who had been immediately behind Peyton. As for Tobias Peyton, well. . .
The fifty caliber BMG round had originally been intended as an anti-aircraft round and as an anti-material round capable of penetrating reinforced walls like those used for pillboxes and bunkers, and the thin armor plating on lighter armored vehicles. The brain child of John Browning himself, it officially entered service in the early 1920's, but ammunition in that caliber had taken many forms in the years since, making the massive round into something far deadlier than even Mister Browning might have envisioned. With selections from armor piercing to incendiary, modern rifles chambered for the 'Big Fifty' could do just about any job it was aimed at.
The round fired from Jody Thompson's rifle however was just a plain, ordinary, full jacketed round, or had at least started that way. Taking that plain bullet, Jody had blunted the tip flat and then drilled a tiny hole in that new feature. Taking a small, very fine-tooth hacksaw blade, he then cut an X shaped groove one quarter of an inch into the bullet, then filled the small drilled area with solder, which he had then sanded smooth. A practice forbidden by the Geneva convention and frowned upon by enforcers of said document.
Thompson hadn't signed that document and in his years of warfare against terror cells, a secret war where no reports were ever filed, he had never felt obligated to follow it since none of his enemies did. As a result, when his modified round smashed into Tobias Peyton's chest, Tobias Peyton essentially ceased to exist as the bullet fragmented into four large pieces and literally tore him inside out. His body fell conveniently in front of Gordon and he repaid the dead man's betrayal of their friendship by using what was left of the lying, no-good, two-faced, back-stabbing son-of-a-bitch as a meat shield to hunker behind.
Clayton had emptied a magazine at the men behind Peyton before hitting the ground himself, using the time Thompson's destruction of Peyton bought him to take cover, changing magazines as he dove behind the same flower bed he had earlier pointed out to his father. Gordon was reasonably safe behind Peyton's remains and Clay decided that he needed cover of his own.
The group supporting Peyton assumed they would have things their own way and so had been careless. There had been twenty-five men besides Peyton and his driver, evidence of Peyton's healthy respect for the Sanders family in general and Clayton in particular. Over half of them were dead within the first few seconds since nine had been killed before the shooting had even started.
“Tommy, don't let them leave,” Clay called over the radio. “The car on the street is carrying some of the women we rescued. Peyton took them from the church.”
“Roger that,” Jody's voice was as cool as ever. The driver of the pickup, seeing so many of the men he had brought on the ground dead or dying, decided discretion was the better part of valor and tried to leave, backing away. He had gone perhaps fifty feet in reverse when the rear passenger wheel on the truck came apart, the report of a rifle reaching him after the truck had hit the ground. He bailed out of the disabled vehicle just in time for Tandi Maseo, coming up from behind to flank the group engaging the Sanders, to slide a katana across his back, severing his spine and most of the rest of him. Maseo was already moving past the 'deputy' before his body finished hitting the ground, Mitchell Nolan twenty feet to his right.
Gordy, meanwhile, had not been taken by surprise as he might have just a week ago. He had been watching the men behind Peyton as well, aware that they were a greater threat to his grand-father and uncle than Peyton was. As soon as the one man raised his rifle toward Gordon, Gordy had cut him down, even before Clay had shoved the older man to the ground.
After that Gordy concentrated on watching for direct threats to his uncle or his grand-father, shooting when he had a clear target and using only single shots save for the opening salvo. This was the second gunfight he had been in this week and he was surprised that his nerves had stayed as calm as they had. He had assumed that if it ever came to this he would be a nervous wreck.
“Cease fire, cease fire,” he heard his Uncle's voice in his ear and lowered his rifle slightly, still watching for signs of danger.
“I 'll kill 'em!” he heard as the gunfire subsided. Looking toward the car that contained the women retaken from the church, he saw a man standing beside the rear window of the car, shotgun pointed into the window.
“I swear I 'll kill 'em all you don't let me get outta here!” the man shouted. “Don't think I won't do it, either! You think I ain't killed women before this? I promise you I 'll-”
Which was as far as he got before Tandi Maseo's katana decapitated him even as Mitchell Nolan used his rifle to direct the shotgun up above the window. The now headless woman killer crashed to the ground to a chorus of screams from the women inside the car.
“Tango check,” Clay ordered. “Tommy, Pancho, Chip, cover.”
“Roger that.” “Roger.” “Copy that.”
Clay, Tandi and Nolan then moved from body to body, checking for live enemies. Where they found one, a simple knife thrust or sword slice finished them off. Soon came the radio call from Clay;
“All clear. Stand down. Tommy, keep watch on the road. There may be more.”
“Roger, Bossman.”
“Well, this is a mess,” Tandi said calmly as he whipped his sword around to clean it of blood before wiping what was left on Tobias Peyton's pants.
“So, it is,” Clay sighed. “And now we've got a car full of screaming females to deal with,” he added, his tone dejected. “Who now know where we live and who we are,” he massaged the bridge of his nose, trying to ward off a coming headache.
“And just think, Boss, it's not quite even lunch yet!” Nolan told him cheerfully.
“Can I hit him?” Tandi asked, looking at Clay.
“Please,” Clay nodded.
“Hey!” Nolan objected. “All I did was point out what time it was!”
“Hit him twice,” Clay told the medic, to scattered laughter around the yard as the group assembled, save for Thompson.
“All right, we need to police this up,” Clay brought their meeting to order. “Scope, send Tully over here, please.”
“On the way,” Caudell called out a few seconds later.
“We 'll let her deal with the women first,” he told them. “They should remember her. Meanwhile, Scope sound the all-clear. We're secure.”
Seconds later the message went over the small GRMS radios all over the ranch that the area was secure. People who had been huddling in their homes with rifles and handguns began to emerge to see what had happened.
“Gordy, will you see if your Uncle Ronny can get his backhoe?” Clay requested. “We need to dig a hole and then we can toss this bunch in the bucket and drop them inside.”
“On it,” Gordy nodded and started for Ronny's house.
“He's pretty steady,” Jose Juarez noted after Gordy was gone.
“Yeah, he is,” Clay agreed.
“So, what was the deal here?” Tandi asked. “All we heard was your side of the conversation. And why are those women with them again?”
“Well, it's like this…”
-
“So, it sounds as if your investigator friend was the problem all along then,” Mitchell Nolan said once Clay was finished, with Gordon filling some missing pieces.
“Looks that way,” Gordon agreed, carefully not looking at the remains of his former friend.
“Here comes Ronny back,” Clay noted, nodding to where a backhoe was approaching, his nephew riding on the fender, rifle at the ready. Ronny throttled down, surveying the damage.
“Well, this looks terrible,” Ronny kept a straight face. “I take it we will be dumping these poor unfortunates in the hole Gordy ju
st had me dig?”
“We will indeed, and I would appreciate it if you would follow along and let us toss them into the bucket, then haul them over.” They had already searched the bodies, or in some cases body parts, collecting weapons, ammunition, gear and anything else that might prove useful.
“Of course,” Ronny nodded. “We are a full-service outfit after all,” he added dryly.
“Gordy, stay where you are and keep a look-out,” Clay ordered. “Tandi, stand by near Tully in case she needs a medic. I don't want those women to get too far from that car because we're going to use it and that van to take them back to the church.”
“Roger that,” Tandi nodded and started that way.
“You sure that's a good idea?” Gordon asked his son.
“Not in the slightest,” Clay admitted. “But we can't keep taking on more people. It's just that simple. This is the second time we've freed them so they need to learn to take care of themselves. This will also let us get an idea of what damage Peyton and his 'deputies' did to the church.”
“Good point,” Gordon nodded. “In that case I think I will go and speak to your mother,” he drew a deep breath. “I suddenly feel very much glad to be alive.”
“Bullet’s flying around you tends to have that effect.”
-
“We want to stay here!”
“Yeah!”
Victoria Tully felt a headache coming on and tried to ignore it.
“You can't stay here,” she said patiently. “I'm truly sorry but there just isn't enough room or resources for so many. Not after the Sanders took so much food to give to the church.”
“How did you get to be here?” the loudest of them demanded of Tully. How to answer that?
“She's one of us,” Maseo replied, taking the heat off her. “It not for her, you probably wouldn't be free now. She belongs here. You do not.”
Tully felt her face heating at how easily the medic had said that, hoping that he meant the part about belonging. She had nowhere else to go anymore.
“Well, we aren't leaving!” another declared, to which Maseo just laughed.