Deserted

by E. H. Reinhard

  “Female shooter is down,” I said.

  Chris took the position I’d just fired from. “They’re gone. They have to be in the shed. The woman is down out front, not moving. Both agents that drove in with our team are down at the front of the truck.”

  Philben cursed under his breath.

  I looked back toward the rest of the group. “Shed!” I shouted.

  From their position, the semi was blocking any line of sight they could have had on the outbuilding.

  Beth, Bill, Philben, and Scott came toward us. Before they could get to us in order to get into any kind of position with sights on the building, the sound of a motor being fired up broke the silent air.

  Chris and Gallo stepped out from the cover of the trailer first, guns in their shoulders. They took up a position at the first of the four large boulders and drew down on the building. I rolled off the corner of the trailer next, with Beth directly at my back. We passed Chris and Gallo quickly and took up a spot behind the next boulder marking the edge of the driveway in line. I brought my gun up over the rock, with Beth doing the same at my shoulder. My eyes went to the sights, trained on the open shed door.

  A pickup truck burst from the front doors of the shed. The passenger window was down, a rifle hanging out. The passenger fired as the pickup fishtailed in the gravel out front. Beth and I got low, taking cover as bullets passed over us and ripped into the semitrailer a few feet away. I took my firing position back over the boulder and aimed at the truck. As I did, shots came from our back. The front wheels of the pickup were locked to the left, and the back end swung around, kicking rocks into the air.

  Bill shouted that they were making a break for the desert.

  I left my position of cover—the shooter on the passenger side had no shot on us—and our group opened up on the vehicle. The back glass shattered in, and the driver slouched. The truck made a hard right and continued east away from the property. Bill put another few rounds into it before the truck bounced on something it ran over and coasted to a stop among the desert bushes a hundred yards away.

  “We’ll get guns on the cab of the rig here and then take the house,” I said. “As soon as we have the cab of the semi covered, you guys go for that truck out there.”

  “Got it,” Philben said.

  Bill, Beth, Scott and I moved along the side of the semi parked in the driveway, guns at the ready.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Kitty

  “Pick up,” Kitty said through clenched teeth. The sound of Kerry’s voice-mail recording played in Kitty’s ear. “Bitch!” Kitty yelled. She didn’t have a phone number for Ben and Bobby’s house, where Kerry had stayed the night. She tossed the phone down onto the truck’s floor.

  Kitty stayed low in the front of the semi, watching the gunfight between the home and the two SUVs parked at the rear left of the semitrailer. Kitty went back into the sleeper of the truck, looking once more for any kind of firearm—again, she found nothing. The only weapon she’d found was a knife that had been lying around on one of the shelves in the sleeper.

  She pulled herself back in between the driver and passenger seats. She glanced out the front of the truck and down at the two agents that lay in the dirt, dead. Movement caught her eye out ahead. The side door of the home leading to the porch opened, and her aunt, uncle, and father emerged carrying rifles. Kitty locked eyes on her father and pulled herself up closer to the windshield. He was shot—blood covered his white T-shirt. Her Uncle Harper held him up with his left arm, dragging him toward the shed. Kitty’s Aunt Ginny walked backward with a rifle ready to fire on anyone she saw. Kitty’s eyes met her aunt’s. Kitty went for the door handle of the truck, but her aunt shook her head.

  “Come on, get to the shed,” Kitty said.

  The group neared when Kitty saw her aunt quickly raise her gun and take aim. The sound of three shots rang and her aunt dropped to the ground just a few feet from the shed’s doors.

  Kitty wanted to scream, but held it in for fear of her location being given away.

  Her uncle turned back, shouted, and took his arm from her father, who dropped to the ground. Uncle Harper fired at an area behind the truck and then quickly helped her father back to his feet. The pair disappeared into the shed.

  Kitty stared at her aunt, lying motionless in the dirt.

  The noise of the pickup truck inside the shed brought Kitty’s eyes off of her aunt’s body. Kitty stared at the open shed doors and watched the truck launch from inside with her father firing from the passenger window. The truck slid a turn in the gravel, the front bumper pointing toward the desert. Kitty sat like a statue, watching as the truck was torn apart by bullets. The sounds of the gunfire never even registered in her head. All she saw was the truck’s rear glass shatter and paint and pieces of the truck fly through the air. Kitty stared at the truck as it made a sharp right, bounced a bit, and came to a stop.

  “Open the door and get out.” Kitty stared at the passenger side, focused on a small bit of her father’s white T-shirt sticking up from inside. “Get out, Daddy. Get up.”

  The agents were yelling to each other outside.

  Kitty glanced into the semi’s side mirror to see agents at the back of the truck and hiding behind the boulders on the side of the driveway where they’d been firing from. She looked back out at the pickup in the distance—she saw no movement from inside. Her eyes welled up with tears, which she did her best to push away. Her father wouldn’t want her to curl up and wait to be captured, which was undoubtedly her fate. He’d want her to fight. He’d want her to take someone out if she was going down. Kitty turned the knife in her hand and pulled herself toward the passenger door. She watched the side mirror, seeing the agents approaching from the back of the trailer. Her knuckles went white around the knife as she reached out for the door handle. Kitty pulled the handle, unlatching it but keeping it closed.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  I kept the barrel of my rifle pointed at the cab of the semi as I approached. Beth, Bill, and Scott walked behind me. I passed where the trailer linked up with the cab and looked up into the side mirror, but I saw nothing from the small view I got into the passenger compartment.

  “We got it. You guys go,” I said.

  Philben, Chris, and Gallo jogged for the pickup truck at rest in the desert. I kept my rifle on the semi. Beth at my shoulder put a bead on the house to cover the group making their way to the pickup truck.

  “They’re there,” Beth said at my back.

  I stared at the semi’s passenger door, which looked a bit ajar. With another step forward, I squared myself to the side of the rig and brought the barrel of my gun up to the window. The second I did, the door flew open, and I saw a blur of a female launching herself directly at me from the truck’s interior. I heard a single gunshot—it wasn’t from my weapon. The flying woman, arms and legs outstretched, hit me square in the chest. She wrapped her arms around me as I caught her and stumbled a step backward. I felt repeated thumps in my back before I let go of my rifle, grabbed her by the hair with one hand and the leg with the other, and threw her to the ground. My hands immediately went back to my rifle, which I brought into my shoulder and aimed at her. I could hear Philben yelling for a report of the fired shot through my ear bud. The woman kicked up dirt as she went for a knife that must have flown from her hand. She scrambled to her feet and held the combat knife, blade down. Dust hung in the air as I got my bearings and focused on her. Blood was seeping from the side of her stomach. She touched the area and looked down at the blood in her hand.

  “Drop the blade!” I shouted.

  I quickly glanced right to see Beth and Bill with sights on her, just a couple feet away. The shot the woman had taken had to have come from one of them. Bill’s voice came through my ear reporting back to Philben that we had guns on a solo woman. Scott had his weapon pointed up into the open doorway of the truck.

  “On the ground, now!” Beth shouted.

  The woman stared at me, swaying back
and forth, her dark hair covered in desert dirt. Searing anger filled her eyes. She wasn’t dropping the knife.

  Bill barked orders at the woman, which she ignored.

  She cracked her neck from side to side. As she did, I caught a cat tattoo on her collarbone. The woman was Katherine Levy, one of the suspects we were after. She lifted the blade up over her right shoulder, let out a shriek, and lunged two steps toward me. I fired three rounds center mass, and she dropped to her knees before falling facedown a few feet away. Her arm with the knife hit the ground a split second after her face. The blade bounced from her hand and came to rest a couple inches from the toe of my boot. I kicked it off the gravel driveway, out into the desert brush.

  Beth rushed to the woman, mounted her back, and pulled cuffs from her hip. She linked the woman up and checked for a pulse. Beth shook her head.

  Through my ear radio, Philben asked if we had the woman secured. I turned to see the group of Gallo, Chris, and Philben at the pickup truck in the distance.

  I hit the mic clipped to my tie. “Katherine Levy is down. She came from inside of the semi.”

  Philben confirmed.

  I pressed the button on my mic again. “What’s the scene there?”

  “Two deceased inside of the truck,” Philben said.

  I hit the mic button a third time. “We’re going for the house. You guys get the shed.”

  He confirmed.

  Beth lifted herself from Katherine Levy’s back and walked straight for me. “Are you okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah, why?”

  Beth took me by the shoulders and spun me. I could feel her running her hand along my back.

  “What the hell are you doing?” I asked.

  “Nothing went through?” she asked. “Crazy bitch stabbed you in the back like five or six times.”

  “My vest must have caught it. I could feel her hitting me with something.”

  Beth poked away, inspecting my back. She jammed a hand up underneath my suit jacket and pulled it back out. “No blood,” she said. “You’re good.”

  “Good, now let’s get in that house.” I looked up into the cab, from which Scott was emerging. “Is the truck clear?”

  Scott stepped down from inside. “There’s some weird shit in there, but she was the only life inside.”

  “Okay. We need to find that one’s sister.” I jerked my head back to the body of Katherine Levy. “She didn’t come out of the house with the others. She may still be inside of the property.”

  “Got it,” Scott said.

  I looked over my shoulder at Beth and Bill.

  “Eyes are open,” Bill said. “Let’s go.”

  We advanced on the house, passing the nose of the truck. I glanced down and to the right at the two agents that we’d come with—and quickly looked away. Bill went to one and then the other, but it was pointless. I kept my eyes off them. In the brief second I’d looked, I saw head wounds on both—not the survivable kind.

  We walked to the home. My weapon was pointed into the void of the bay window we’d been taking fire from. I could see into the living room and the kitchen area of the home, but I spotted no movement. From the place I stood, I could see the cracked-open side door. I looked to the left inside of the home and spotted a hallway we couldn’t see down. I realized entering the side door would give us a better view and avoid any blind corners. I motioned to Bill to keep eyes on the front door while we approached the side door on the patio that stood open. He stayed in place with his gun aimed at the area.

  Scott and I stepped up onto the wood boards of the patio.

  Beth passed us on the other side of the railing. “I’ll get the back.”

  We confirmed. Scott walked to the doorway and stood off to the right of the cracked-open door. I stayed square to the door on the porch, got low, and aimed inside. I gave Scott the nod, and he jammed the toe of a boot into the gap of the door. He kicked it open and brought his rifle up, aiming into the house.

  “Living room is clear,” he said.

  I took a single step left and got a view into the kitchen. “What I can see of the kitchen is clear.” I led in through the open doorway and swung my weapon right as soon as I entered, to clear the area not visible from outside. Scott followed me in. The living room consisted of some ratty old furniture and a television with bunny ears sitting on a small cart. A coffee table was flipped over in the center of the room and facing the blown-out bay window. Blood stained the underside of the table, with more in the shaggy rust-colored carpeting. I swung my view right toward the kitchen. A green phone hung on the small dividing wall separating the rooms. The kitchen was wood paneled, with a single window above the sink looking out to the back of the property. I walked to a single door near the refrigerator, and Scott came at my back. I pulled the door open as he covered—a food pantry and no one hiding inside. With the two rooms clear, Scott and I went straight to the hallway. The first door to our left was smaller than a standard size. Scott pulled it open, revealing a foot-deep linen closet. He swung the door closed, and we stepped farther into the hallway, which had four more doors—two right, one left, and a door at the end. All the doors stood open except the farther one on the right.

  We quickly cleared the room on the left, a bathroom. The nearer of the two on the right was cleared next, a bedroom with no one hiding in the closet. I walked from the room and rejoined Scott, who was covering me and the hallway. We went to the closed door next in line. Scott pointed a finger at the bedroom with the open door at the back of the hall, signaling we should clear it first.

  We walked toward the room, and Scott kept a gun on the closed hallway door.

  The room at the end of the hall was another bedroom, the master. I quickly cleared it and the master bathroom while Scott balanced covering me and keeping eyes on the closed door. I met him back at the entrance for the master bedroom, and we went to the final door.

  Scott and I stood off to the door’s sides.

  “FBI!” I waited for a round to come through the door or any sounds of movement from inside—nothing. I took a step back, into the doorway of the bathroom, and brought my weapon up on the closed door. Then, I gave Scott the signal to open it.

  He reached out for the knob and tried giving it a twist. He mouthed the word locked.

  I looked at the knob. There was nothing to lock the room from the outside. Someone had either locked the knob and then closed the door or locked the door from within.

  “FBI!” I shouted again. “If you’re in that room, surrender!”

  Again, we heard nothing.

  I glanced up at Scott from my crouched position. He counted down from three on his fingers and then mule kicked the hollow-core door. The door splintered and flew open, slamming into the wall inside the room.

  Immediately, I saw a woman seated beside what I could see of a bed. “Hands!” I shouted.

  I stood and stepped across the hall and into the room, my weapon aimed at the old woman, seated in a wheelchair. With a quick glance left and right, I spotted only her inside. Scott rolled around the door frame and entered the room behind me. He stepped off to the left and drew a bead on the old woman, who appeared somewhere in her eighties. I figured her to be the Levy woman the home belonged to. Gray stringy hair ran down the sides of her wrinkled face. The woman’s right eyeball was mostly white, and her lips were puckered into her mouth. She wore what looked like blue pajamas under a white robe. A blanket lay across her lap. Her hands rested on her legs atop the blanket—both hands empty.

  Scott quickly cleared the room’s closet.

  “Is there anyone else in the house?” I asked.

  The old woman didn’t respond.

  “Can you walk?” Scott asked.

  Again she said nothing.

  Her hand shot under the blanket, faster than any old woman in her eighties had a right to move. I heard a gunshot and was immediately hit by what felt like a punch to the chest. I heard two more shots as I took a step back and fired three times. Bloo
d began to wet her white robe. The woman hunched forward in her chair. A small pistol dropped from her hanging hand to the floor. I looked down, seeing a tuft of fabric protruding from my FBI vest.

  Scott kicked the pistol away from the woman and rushed toward me. “You hit? Where? How bad?”

  I stared down and unzipped the FBI vest then unbuttoned my suit jacket and ripped the front of my dress shirt open. I stared down at a small-caliber bullet lodged and flattened into the front of my Bureau-issued vest.

  “Penetrate?” Scott asked.

  I slid my hand between my vest and my undershirt, feeling nothing abnormal and no warmth from blood.

  “Nothing came through?” Scott asked.

  I let out a cough. “No.”

  I heard a report request coming through my ear radio. I called back that the old woman in the house had fired a shot and we returned fire. Philben confirmed.

  “Anything in the shed?” I asked over the radio.

  “Another big rig and cages. The cages look like they are set up for holding people—all empty. As far as hostiles, it’s clear,” Philben called back.

  “We’re missing one of the girls. I doubt she’s far if her sister and the vehicle that she’s been traveling in is here. Get word to the agents en route to start making stops at anything that’s open. We’re looking for the blond-haired one. Kerry.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Kerry

  “Do you have your phone?” Ben asked.

  “Yep. I grabbed it. Dead as can be, though,” Kerry said. “It died playing music last night.” She poked her head back into the doorway and looked at Bobby, sitting on the couch and watching television. “Are you sure you don’t want to come and get breakfast with us?” she asked. “Eggs and bacon and pancakes and grease. It will soak up all the booze.”