“You did the right thing,” Keith said. “There’s nothing else you could have done if there were that many of them.”
“You said the men you saw looked like soldiers,’ Eric said. “Were they in uniform? Did their trucks have any special paint or markings on them that you could see?”
“There was nothing about the trucks that was special, except that they all looked pretty new and they were all full-sized Fords. A couple of them were a shade of light gray, or maybe silver. It was hard to tell in that light. One may have been white. The other one was dark blue, I think. They definitely weren’t National Guard trucks or anything like that, but those men were all geared up and acting like soldiers, yelling orders and spreading out from house-to-house, waking everybody up.”
From what Henri was telling them, Eric could only deduce that the men he’d seen were C.R.I. contractors or cartel enforcers—perhaps both. Eric had hoped they wouldn’t arrive here before he had time to resurrect the schooner and persuade his brother and father to leave, but now it appeared that he was the one about to be persuaded—persuaded to get involved in a fight he wanted nothing to do with. Keith and Greg had to respond, even if they were too late to prevent what had already happened. Eric wouldn’t let his brother go alone with just one partner who’d only recently recovered from a life-threatening gunshot wound, and he knew Bart would insist on going too, and so it was that their salvage work came to an immediate halt. As they put away their tools and sorted their weapons and magazines, Jonathan argued for inclusion too, but Eric wasn’t having it.
“Your mission is to get your ass down to the Miss Anita in Keith’s patrol boat and tell Shauna and the others what’s going on. I want you to set up a rotating watch with the entire crew and keep a sharp lookout until we get back. It’s possible that C.R.I. patrols will come upriver by boat, so you have to be ready.”
Jonathan was disappointed, as Eric knew he would be, but the kid understood the reason he needed to obey his orders. As he motored out of the bayou alone, Eric, Keith, Greg and Bart loaded into Lynn’s Jeep and headed west to check on Henri’s neighbors. The old guy was badly shaken, and that was understandable, as he didn’t know if the friends he’d left behind were alive or dead. All he could tell them for sure was that he’d seen them forced out of their houses and rounded up alongside the road, and that he’d heard a few gunshots too. Whatever happened after that took place during the considerable amount of time it took Henri to make his way to Keith’s by boat, so Eric wasn’t surprised that by the time they arrived on the scene in the early afternoon, there were no trucks nor any people in sight. All four of them knew better than to drop their guard though, and it was their cautious approach that saved them from falling victim to the ambush that awaited them.
And now that he had killed three more of the shooters occupying the house after taking them by surprise from his new position, Eric knew there was still at least one more to go—the gunman that opened fire on him with the fully automatic AK-47. But what he heard next, several minutes after the echoes of the Kalashnikov faded away, was two sharp pops from what he was certain was a handgun. A brief silence that followed those reports was finally shattered by a woman’s voice, imploring: “DON’T SHOOT! I’M NOT WITH THEM!”
Four
ERIC PAUSED AND LISTENED after hearing the unexpected shout from the house. The woman followed her cry with a call for help, stating again that she wasn’t with the gunmen. Since there had been no more gunfire from the house after the two distinct pistol reports, Eric wondered whether it was a trick or if he’d indeed had unexpected help from the inside that silenced the AK. The fact that the person calling out to him was a female meant little to Eric though. If the shooters in the house were C.R.I. or cartel enforcers, Eric knew there could be women among their ranks, especially in the present environment. He picked up the VHF and pressed the transmitter button to advise Keith of what had just happened. His brother had heard the shouts too, because he was now in position near the opposite side of the house and told Eric he was moving closer to see if he could get a look through the windows from that angle.
When Eric put the radio back down, the woman in the house called out again, saying there was no one else alive in there but her and that she had been held captive by the men who’d been doing all the shooting. She said that she had been staying with her aunt who lived in the neighborhood, just down the street, and she sounded convincing, so Eric risked a peek around the lower corner of the wall enough to get another view of the house. Behind the shattered glass of the window he’d fired into, he could see the movement of a white towel or rag waved back and forth just above the sill by someone who was probably lying on the floor inside. Eric felt confident that this was no female operator, because anyone with training would know that unlike the brick front of the house, the wood planking on the side surrounding the window wouldn’t provide cover from rifle bullets.
“STAND UP WHERE I CAN SEE YOU IN THE WINDOW!” Eric shouted, as he watched for sudden movement through the lens of the Aimpoint, ready to obliterate any threat that presented itself if his assessment was wrong.
“OKAY! BUT DON’T SHOOT!” The woman yelled back.
Eric shouted back to assure her that he wouldn’t, but also advised her that the house was surrounded. When he saw her rise to her feet and wave the white cloth again, he trusted that she was actually telling the truth, and that she really was a resident of the area and not one of the raiders. Eric called Keith again on the radio to tell him what he’d observed, and after warning his brother to be careful, shouted back to the woman, ordering her to step outside the front door so they could clear the house. Moments later, she appeared on the porch, looking in his general direction, trying to spot him, but unsure of from where Eric’s voice had come. He was about to call Keith again when his brother’s transmission broke over the radio first:
“Stand down, Eric! She’s legit. I know her!”
“She says she’s alone, and that everyone else inside is dead.”
“Then they probably are. Diane would have no reason to lie. I think we’re good to go.”
Eric trusted Keith’s judgement and it agreed with his own. There hadn’t been another shot fired since the woman first called out, and scanning the rest of the neighborhood, he still saw no signs of life among any of the other houses. He slipped the radio back into his pocket and got to his feet. When he reached the front steps of the house, Keith was already there, sitting beside the woman on the far end of the porch. Eric saw at a glance that she was injured, having taken a hard blow to the face that left her right eye swollen and bruised. Keith was tending to it as he sat talking with her.
“Clear?” Eric asked.
“I only checked the two front rooms, but Diane says that the back is clear too. I figured you’d want to do a sweep anyway, to grab the weapons.”
Eric did, but before he went in, he saw Bart and Greg step out of the tree line across the field out front and waved them forward before turning to enter the house alone. Just inside the front door by one of the big windows facing the porch, Eric saw the body of the man Bart had shot in the face with his .308. That one never knew what hit him, but the other guy in the same room that Eric had hit in the first exchange had probably gone a little harder, bleeding out on the cypress floor from a 5.56 round that must have nicked an artery as it sliced through his neck. And farther back, in the dining room, Eric found the body of the next man he’d shot through the side window, killed by the two rounds that hit him in the upper chest.
Eric hadn’t stopped to check the bodies of the two he’d shot outside near the hedges, but a glance at them on his way to the house confirmed the two kills he was already certain of. That left the AK gunner as the last tango he knew for sure was inside the house, and Eric found him in a back bedroom, collapsed on the carpet, his shirt soaked in the blood that leaked from two bullet holes in the middle of his back, the Kalashnikov still clutched in his right hand beneath him. Eric rolled him off of it wit
h a foot and pulled it from his fingers, noting at a glance that it was of Russian manufacture. Then he went back to the other rooms and collected the rest of the weapons, which included variants of M4 and AR-15 carbines and Sig, Glock and Springfield pistols. The dead man in the dining room was wearing an empty combat holster with a thigh strap, and when Eric went back out front, he learned that it was that man’s missing pistol that Diane had used to kill his Ak wielding companion in the back room. She was visibly shaken but was holding herself together well enough to talk to Keith, who quickly introduced them, telling Eric he’d known her and her husband, Joe as long as he’d lived here.
Eric nodded and gave her a reassuring smile as he picked up the 9-mm Sig from the porch floor next to Keith. “You were absolutely right, Diane. There’s nothing alive in that house. Good work taking that last guy out! He figured out where I was and was trying to make it difficult for me to finish my job.”
“The dead guy she took the pistol from did this,” Keith said, indicating her bruised face. After you shot him and the other two that were outside, that last guy was too preoccupied with trying to kill you to notice what was going on. Diane got loose from where they tied her up in one of the bathrooms and slipped into the dining room, grabbed the gun and went back and nailed the bastard herself!”
“I would have shot every last one of them if I could have!” Diane said. “I knew what they were going to do to me, and they would have killed me when they were finished. It would have already happened if you guys hadn’t come when you did.”
“It seemed as if they were expecting us,” Eric said. “Did you hear them say anything about that? Do you know how they got here? We had a report of men arriving in several trucks, but I still haven’t seen their vehicles. Were there more of them that already left?”
“Yes, a lot more. They took nearly everyone they found here with them, as far as I know, except maybe a few that I think they shot. I have no idea where they took them, but I think I’m the only one still alive here they didn’t take, and I suppose I know why, but yeah, I heard those men in the house talking about the sheriff’s department. They stayed behind on purpose, and I was afraid Keith would come alone if he came at all. I’m sure glad he had help.”
So, it was a deliberate ambush, just as Eric had suspected. And Diane was probably correct in her assessment of why these men kept her behind. They probably thought they were in for a long, boring wait. She was perhaps a little older than Eric but still a beautiful woman that probably got double takes from guys half her age. Whoever was in charge of the operation made an exception of her when the other folks living around there were taken away. But where did they take them? Was this the beginning of the occupation of the region and the relocation of its citizens? Eric already knew the answer, and he was sure that Keith did too as they looked at each other and then to Bart and Greg as the two men joined them on the porch. Greg, of course, being a lifelong resident of the parish, knew Diane Lambert as well, and after Keith filled everyone in, he and Bart agreed that it appeared to be a deliberate ambush to target what was left of the sheriff’s department.
“They knew we would come. Henri thought they didn’t see him slip away, but I’ll bet they were well aware of him and let him go deliberately, when they could have just as easily shot him.”
“Diane said they came in at daybreak with overwhelming, coordinated force and just stormed the houses,” Keith said. “I suppose most of the residents never had a chance to put up a fight, and that’s probably a good thing, because it would have been a losing proposition.”
“Yes,” Diane said. “It was a good thing that my husband wasn’t around, because he would have gotten himself killed! Most of the people that live around here are older folks, like my aunt. We’d tried to get her to move to our place, but they didn’t get as much hurricane damage here and she said she’d be more comfortable in her own house. I was staying here with her while Joe made a Gulf run on the trawler. Until today, she was doing okay for the most part because her neighbors that stayed have been sticking together. You already know that everyone that could travel or had family elsewhere left a long time ago, but some of us decided back when it all began that we’d either make it here or not make it at all. I think Joe spoke with you about that before.”
“Yes, he did. And I totally understand the sentiment. When did he go to the coast?”
“The day before yesterday. He took Ronnie and one crew. Unless they’re having better than average luck, they’ll be away for a few more days. Now I don’t know what I’ll do. I have no idea where they took Aunt Lucy, or if she’s hurt or not.”
“Don’t give up hope. If they wanted to, they could have just killed everyone here, but for some reason they didn’t. But for right now, you can’t just stay here by yourself. You need to come back with us until Joe comes in. We’ve got room for you. We’ve got my brother-in-law, Vic’s trawler tucked away downriver in a safe hideaway. That’s our home base for the moment.”
“I heard about what happened to Vic. I’m so sorry, Keith. That’s a lot to bear after losing Lynn too.”
“We’ve all lost a lot,” Keith said. “All we can do is make the best of it and take care of the people that are left.”
“He’s right,” Eric said. “And he’s right about you coming with us. When these men fail to report back to wherever they were supposed to rendezvous, someone is going to come looking for them. You can’t stay in your aunt’s home, not that I’d imagine you want to right now anyway.”
“I know,” Diane said. “I’ll go with you, but I’ve got to somehow get word to Joe, before he comes back and finds all this. He won’t have any idea where to look for me.”
“We’ll get the message to him,” Keith said. “I’ve got plenty of fuel for my patrol boat and I can run downriver to the marsh and get close enough to raise him on the VHF, unless they’re fishing too far offshore. I need to get the word to other folks still living on the bayous too. I’ve already warned most of them this was coming, but it’s here now.”
“I know you did, Keith. Joe was talking about it before he left. We were just hoping it wouldn’t really happen.”
“All of us were, but my brother here assured me that it would. He’s seen how big that organization is and what they’re all about. If we’re going to survive this, we’ve got to get organized too, and prepared to fight!”
Or get the hell out, Eric thought, as he’d been saying all along. The trouble with that though was that they had apparently run out of time. The schooner was still on the bottom of the bayou, and even if it wasn’t, there was a lot of work to be done to get the vessel ready to go to sea again—work that would take weeks at best. Eric had to figure out a way to buy the time he needed, but C.R.I. had made the first move, and they were likely to make the next one too. Eric knew he had to think, and think fast, and everyone in their little group had to be on board with it. They needed to have a pow wow to discuss it, and they needed to do it now.
But before they left to return to the Atchafalaya, Keith insisted they first do a quick sweep of the little neighborhood to double check for anyone left behind, either living or dead. While Keith and Eric performed that duty, Bart and Greg escorted Diane to her aunt’s house so that she could grab her things she would need. Eric was a bit surprised to find that Diane was apparently right when she said she didn’t think many, if any of the residents here were killed in the confrontation. The fact that they had pulled it off so smoothly told Eric that the men who planned this raid were professional operators.
The six that stayed to set up the ambush had made fatal mistakes though, probably without their commander’s knowledge. The first one was their decision to keep Diane there with them, and the second was their failure to spread their unit out among more than one of the houses. That second one was related to the first, Eric knew, because none of the men in the unit wanted to miss out on what they had in mind. Eric supposed they figured that since the main approach to the community was by the one w
ide open road, getting the drop on whoever showed up would be easy. Since they were all dead, there was no one to interrogate and ask whether or not the six planned to extract on their own, wait for a pickup, or stay there and coordinate with reinforcements moving in later. Eric would have loved to have that conversation, especially with the man who’d hit Diane so hard that her eye was now swollen closed, but he had to satisfy himself that he’d made that one pay dearly for his own fatal mistake of silhouetting himself in an unobstructed window. It was amazing how thoroughly the presence of an attractive woman had clouded the judgement of those pricks. Eric figured Diane wasn’t the first who’d fallen into their hands, but she was certainly the last.
The five of them crowded into the Jeep for the drive back to Keith’s place, and when they were close enough for radio contact, Keith called Jonathan on the VHF and asked him to come pick them up. While they were waiting on the kid to make the run up the river in the patrol boat, Eric and Bart stood on the dock overlooking the submerged schooner and discussed the limited options they were left with.
“If they roll in here, they’re going to see this and see what we were trying to do, but I doubt they’ll bother with making it worse. Hell, she’s already on the bottom. What more could they do?”
“Drop a couple of grenades down the hatch for good measure, I guess,” Eric said.
“Yeah, maybe. I doubt they’d bother though. Look, you know as well as I do, this isn’t a good place to try and hold off an attacking force of any size. It’s too accessible, with both a road and a water approach. With the house burned down there’s little else here. Even before, there wasn’t much in the way of hard cover. We’d have to dig in over there in the woods across the bayou, and even if we did, there’s not enough of us to defend it.”
Feral Nation - Defiance (Feral Nation Series Book 8) Page 4