“Are we calling them out or trying to go in strong?” Chris asked.
“We still have an unknown of hostages or abductees or whatever you want to call them,” I said.
“You think that there may be more still inside, other than what we see out here?” Philben asked.
“We just don’t have any way of knowing for certain one way or another.”
“Our SWAT unit will be arriving with our next wave. We can turn the scene over to them if need be,” Philben said. “I’d like to try to make contact and see if we can call out whoever is inside first. With this place surrounded by our agents, no one from here is going to get out. There’s a loudspeaker hooked up to the truck. Keep eyes on this place, and I’ll make the call.”
Philben walked to the driver’s side door of the truck we’d arrived in. Past him, an agent with a gun aimed at the home was kneeling in the desert in the distance. I glanced right to look for more of the agents surrounding the property, but my view was blocked by the semitrailer.
Philben pulled open the driver’s door and leaned inside.
Our group took positions, aiming at the home. Beth and Scott were at the hood of the truck Philben was in. Bill was to my left, using the rear of the same truck for cover. Gallo and Chris had taken the hood area of the second truck with rifles aimed at the home. Past them, at the back of the vehicle, the agent that drove and Agent Stanley rounded the back of the semi. I walked around a couple of small desert bushes to the nose of the truck near Gallo and Chris and took a firing stance. I put sights on the front door of the home. As soon as I did, I heard two quick gunshots then automatic gunfire.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Silas
Silas cracked his eyelids and tried to focus on the analog wind-up clock on his nightstand. He squinted hard, groaned, and yawned, feeling his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth. The dull pain behind his eyes quickly reminded him of the amount of whiskey he’d drunk the night before or, more accurately, a few hours prior. When his vision came into focus, the glowing hands showed a couple minutes before six in the morning. Silas closed his eyes, trying to fall back asleep. While he lay there, a couple minutes passed as what had originally woken him became clearer—a full bladder.
Silas tried to keep his eyes closed as he rolled off the edge of the bed and stumbled in his underwear and T-shirt from the bedroom to the bathroom one door down the short hall. His shoulder bumped the door frame as he entered the bathroom and found his position, centered over the toilet. He only cracked his eyes a couple of times to check aim before flushing, swaying, and yawning again. Silas opened and closed his mouth and ran his dried-out tongue around the inside of his cheeks, searching for saliva—he found no relief. Silas turned his head, bent at the waist, and stuck his face under the bathroom sink’s faucet. He filled his mouth, swallowed, and filled it again. His thirst quenched, he lifted his head out of the bowl and went toward the towel bar near the window to dry off his beard. Silas reached for the hanging towel and caught movement outside the bathroom’s window.
He took a single step to the right and looked left out of the window. He repeated the process, taking steps to the left and looking right. Silas turned and left the bathroom. “Girls!” he yelled. “Kitty! Kerry!”
His calls received no response. He checked the living room to see if they were on the couch—nothing.
“Shit, they’re in the truck,” Silas said. He quickly made his way down the hall—passing the bathroom, his bedroom, and his mother’s bedroom—and went to the door of Harper and Ginny’s bedroom at the end of the hall. He twisted the knob and walked in.
Silas stared at his brother and sister-in-law in bed. Harper cracked his eyes open.
“What’s all the shouting about? What do you need?” Harper asked.
“We have feds outside.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Federal agents surrounding the house. I just saw three out back. Where are the boys?”
Harper ripped the blankets away from himself then stuck his fingers between the slats of the headboard to spread the blinds over the window. He ripped his hand back and scrambled out of bed. “Get your ass up, Ginny!” Harper rushed to the dresser and started ripping out clothes from within. He threw a shirt and pair of pants at Ginny and then pulled a pair of jeans on himself. Harper took a pistol from the top dresser drawer and stuffed it into his waistline. “The boys aren’t here?”
“They ain’t here. Neither are Kitty and Kerry.”
“The boys probably went home. Are the girls in the truck?” Harper asked.
“I don’t know.”
Ginny quickly put on the T-shirt Harper tossed at her and rolled from bed to put on her pants. “Where are the feds?” she asked. “How many?”
“I don’t know,” Silas said.
Harper nodded at an assault rifle propped against the wall near the door. “Take that,” he said.
Silas picked the rifle up, dropped the magazine and clicked it back into the weapon after confirming ammunition.
Harper went to the closet, and came back with two additional magazines for the rifle Silas held. “Take these. Thirty rounds each.” He held them out toward Silas.
Silas took the magazines in hand.
“Those are gonna go quick. That’s full auto. Just hold down the trigger.”
“Give me something else, too,” Silas said.
“We’ll get you set. First, go put on some damn pants.”
Silas glanced down at his own dingy white boxer shorts and hustled back to his bedroom. Down the hall, Ginny said she was going to try to get a hold of the kids. Silas grabbed his pants from the floor of his room and pulled them on. He slid the knife on his belt farther back and jammed the rifle magazines down into his front pocket. Ginny and Harper passed by outside his open bedroom door. He walked out after them and found Ginny standing in the living room. Harper was pulling weapons from a cabinet near the kitchen.
“Get a hold of the kids?” Silas asked.
“No, Ben’s phone went straight to voice mail. I didn’t get an answer on Bobby’s.” Ginny said.
“Did you leave a message?” Harper asked.
“No, I didn’t know if I should.”
“Did you try the girls?” Silas asked.
Ginny held up her palms. “I don’t know their number.”
“Give me a phone.”
Harper turned back from the gun cabinet, where he was loading ammo into magazines. “Brother, if things go south here, they’ll be able to track the call you make to the girls.”
“They need to be warned if they aren’t here,” Silas said. “I need to call.”
“Use the house phone. Make it quick,” Harper said. “Every second gets them closer to taking us out.”
“Shit, what about Mom?” Ginny asked.
“Go tell her to keep her damn head down. And tell her to get her gun,” Harper said.
Ginny ran to her mother-in-law’s bedroom.
Silas went to the phone hanging on the wall where the living room met the kitchen, scooped up the receiver, and dialed Kitty’s phone number. The phone rang and rang in his ear before her voice mail came on. He waited for the beep. “Baby, we have feds at the house. If you’re not here, don’t come back. Run. If you’re in the truck, get a damn gun out the window.”
Silas ended the call and tried Kerry, who didn’t answer. “Shit!” He hung the phone back on the wall without leaving a message.
“Didn’t answer?” Harper asked.
“No. Neither. I left Kitty a message. Kerry never checks hers.”
“We have to make a move here. We can’t waste any more time.”
Silas let out a breath and shook his head. “Okay.”
Ginny ran back into the living room.
“Is Mom good?” Harper asked.
“Yeah.”
“All right. We need to get a look out of each side of the house,” Harper said. “We need to see how much firepower we’re dealing with.”<
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Silas said nothing but went to look out the front windows and saw two trucks pulling down the driveway toward the house. “We have two SUVs coming up the driveway.”
Ginny rushed to the windows on the west side of the house. “Two FBI assholes off to the west,” she said.
Silas went to the kitchen window, looking out the same direction he’d originally seen from the bathroom and only spotted two men kneeling. “Two more in back.”
“There was two on our bedroom side,” Harper said. “Silas, keep eyes on those two trucks. Stay out of view.”
Silas took up a position near the couch and peered out. He watched the two black SUVs pull nose to tail in the scrub brush to the west side of the semitrailer clogging the driveway. Multiple men and a single woman, all wearing blue FBI vests, piled out of the two trucks.
“Looks like both trucks were full. Maybe seven or eight agents,” Silas said.
Harper clicked a magazine into an assault rifle, grabbed another he’d already had set, and turned back into the room. He walked to Ginny and Silas and handed one of the rifles to Ginny. “So a dozen agents, plus or minus. Let’s whittle that down right away. We’re going to need to get rid of what’s here right now and get the hell out of here before they call any of their friends.”
“What about the girls?” Ginny asked.
“If they’re in the truck, they’ll hear our gunfire and damn well wake up to help,” Silas said.
Harper grabbed the edge of the old wooden coffee table and flipped it onto its side. He slid it into the middle of the living room, facing the window looking out of the front. “Ginny, get our bedroom side. I’ll take the back. Silas, you take the front. Get sights on someone. Head shots, and then spray down the next person you see. They’ll all be wearing body armor. Keep your shots neck up. We can get this group down to half or less in seconds. Yell back when you have your aim, and I’ll give the count.”
“I love you, baby,” Ginny said.
Harper gave her a nod. “Til death do us part.”
“What’s the plan if we take care of who is outside?” Silas asked.
“Get to the truck in the shed and get the hell out of here,” Harper said. “We’ll take the desert a few miles before finding our way back to the roads.”
“Okay,” Silas knelt behind the coffee table and propped the rifle on the table’s edge. Silas stared at the home’s front window ten feet away. He positioned himself so the two black trucks were visible outside between gaps in the half-drawn curtains. He squinted his left eye and brought the sights up on the hood of the truck nearest the semitrailer, where the agents were assembling.
“Harper, I have a bunch of these guys grouped right now!” Silas said.
“Ginny? You set?” Harper called out.
Ginny confirmed that she had sights on an agent.
“Count of three. Just like I said. One good shot and then spray.”
“Got it,” Silas called.
“Silas, go straight to the spray if you have a group there,” Harper said.
“Yeah.” Silas moved his sights to the truck nearest the semi. He steadied the sights directly on the head of a dark-haired agent at the front of the hood. Two other agents were visible to his left.
“Three, two, one,” Harper said.
Silas squeezed the trigger, which didn’t budge. He heard two shots, one each from Ginny and Harper, before hearing automatic gunfire. Silas tilted the rifle in his hand. “Shit.” He flipped off the weapon’s safety and put his sights back on the area. All of the agents had disappeared from view. Silas held down the trigger. The front window exploded outward as bullets passed through and ripped into the sides of the two black SUVs the agents were hiding behind.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Safety glass from the trucks’ windows flew through the air. The constant tinking of the bullets pounding into the far side of the SUVs blended with the sounds of the shots themselves. I dropped to my rear and put my back against the front rim of the truck nearest the semitrailer, keeping my head low and hoping that the vehicle’s rims and engine would block any rounds from coming through. I glanced to my left to see the sheet metal of the truck on our side dimpled out from the rounds that had made it through the passenger compartment and exited the driver’s and rear doors on our side. Gallo was down in the dirt in front of me. His eyes were locked forward on me. Chris was taking cover at the back wheel of the SUV. I noticed an exit hole a few inches from his face in the truck’s quarter panel. The gunfire ripping into the far side of the SUVs stopped momentarily. Chris stayed low and took a position at the back of the semitrailer.
“Report! Report! Report!” Philben’s voice called over the radio. I heard him screaming the request a few feet off to my right then heard his voice coming through the earbud in my right ear a split-second later.
I glanced over at Bill at the rear wheel of the SUV next to us. Philben was close at Bill’s back, still calling into the radio. Beth and Scott were at the nose of the SUV, near the front fender, taking cover behind the engine block of the front truck.
I heard a bit of a transmission with names, four of them, followed by the word down before the automatic gunfire started again. The rapid sounds of the shots and the metallic slaps of the rounds entering the SUVs continued. The way both trucks were pitched, I could tell the tires were blown on the far side. The remaining safety glass from the windows that hadn’t been blown out during the shooter’s first round of gunfire flew through the air. Tufts from the fabric seats inside of the vehicle flew from the window openings. The bullets entering the SUVs stopped again, but the sound of automatic gunfire remained. It continued momentarily before the pitch and frequency of the sounds being fired changed briefly and then stopped altogether.
“Three automatics,” Chris said from his position at the trailer twenty feet away.
I turned and faced him. “We can’t just sit here.”
I again heard Philben yelling for a report before his voice came through my earbud. Nothing but silence came through the earbud after Philben’s request.
“Shit!” Philben yelled and ripped the radio from his ear. He brought the stock of his rifle into his shoulder, stepped from his cover at the back wheel, and took a firing position between the rear of his truck and the front of the one we were crouched behind. Philben held the sights to his eye and quickly pirouetted back around the truck’s rear quarter panel and got low just as more gunfire erupted from inside of the house and shredded the back gate of the truck where he stood. The gunfire stopped.
“I saw him,” Philben said. “Solo shooter behind a table inside. Center of the living room. I’m taking a shot.” He retook his position and fired three rounds into the house. Philben spun back to safety on our side of the vehicle. There was no return fire.
“Down?” I asked.
Philben nodded. “Down.”
“They’re going to run out of ammunition with those autos,” Scott called out.
“We can’t wait them out,” Beth said. “These trucks aren’t going to take much more. We need to move.”
“Door, door, door!” Chris shouted.
I glanced over at him and saw him around the back of the semitrailer with sights on the home. Gallo, lying in the dirt in front of me, pushed himself to his feet, stayed low, and ran toward Chris. I brought my feet underneath me and followed suit—staying down and getting to Chris and Gallo as quickly as possible. Through the small gap between the back of the bullet-ridden truck and the semitrailer, I glanced left to see three armed people exiting the side door of the house. Chris and Gallo had taken firing positions low at both sides of the back of the trailer. I crouched between them, directly in the center of the trailer.
A quick burst of gunfire came in our direction, peppering both SUVs. Gallo and Chris pulled from their spots. The three of us took cover directly at the back bumper of the semitrailer. Chunks of an off-white substance flew from the back end of the trailer and landed all around us—whatever the padding was tha
t lined the inside of the eighteen-wheeler’s trailer. When the shots stopped, I passed Chris, staying crouched. I brought my weapon around the side of the trailer and immediately saw our shooters, two men and one female, going toward the shed on the property. One of the men had his arm around the shoulders of the other and was being assisted—his white T-shirt red with blood. All three held rifles. The female was square to the trailer, walking backward, her weapon at chest level. Her head turned square to me, and she brought the stock of the weapon into her shoulder as she lifted the barrel.
My sights were on her in an instant. I squeezed off three rounds, hitting her center mass. The woman dropped before she got off a single round, and one of the men shouted. I swung my sights to the right but heard shots before I got either of the targets in view. I kicked myself backward behind the cover of the trailer and backpedaled across the dirt. Bullets slammed through the side of the trailer and kicked up dirt inches from my feet. I felt a slap against the sole of my boot—a ricochet of a bullet shard or something kicked up from a round. I retreated farther back, curled my leg, and checked my boot—a splintered piece of a bullet was lodged in the thick rubber sole but hadn’t penetrated. I got my feet back underneath me and got my gun back into my shoulder. The gunfire stopped.
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