by David Carter
They crouched low, scurrying through the kitchen, staying beneath window-level until they reached the entrance. Blaze did a quick count of seats in the mess-hall. Nine tables. Six chairs allocated to eight out of the nine tables, and three chairs allocated to the smaller table at the head of the room, for the camp commanders. Fifty-one, minus two kills...forty nine fuckers to go, he deduced.
Doyle peeked through the window out into the compound. Their presence had gone undetected thus far. An added bonus. With nothing other than an assortment of pistols and hunting knives to do their bidding, it was fair to say the odds were heavily stacked against them.
But that didn’t deter Doyle. After a moment of observation, he noticed a fairly simple pattern the guards on patrol were keeping to: three pairs of guards, spaced evenly apart around the perimeter, constantly moving in a clockwise motion.
The spotlights lit up the camp’s entire compound. The second Doyle and his men stepped out of the mess hall they’d surely be seen if one of the soldiers on patrol happened to look in their direction. After a further moment’s observation, Doyle noticed a series of blind spots, and devised a plan. “We’ll pick them off, two at a time,” Doyle said. He told Ryan to watch the first pair of soldiers, Spider the second, and Blaze the third. Then when all three weren’t looking he would make a beeline for the shadows between the nearby barracks.
Doyle gingerly opened the door and waited for his signal.
“Clear,” Ryan said.
“Clear,” Spider said.
“Go now!” Blaze said.
Doyle ducked across the open space towards the nearest building, going flat on his stomach as he reached the safety of the shadows. The barracks were elevated on piles, giving Doyle enough room to slide beneath the floorboards and conceal himself in time for the soldiers to meander past his position. Once they had cleared the barracks he ducked across the grass to the adjacent barracks and scrambled beneath before patiently waiting.
Doyle had elected Blaze as his sidekick for the attack, which meant relying on Spider and Ryan to get the timing right with the circling patrols.
“Patrol one, clear,” Ryan said.
“Patrol two and three...clear!” Spider added.
Blaze dashed across the void to the safety of the nearest barracks without being spotted. He quickly got a fix on the three pairs of soldiers, determining that his presence had gone undetected, and felt it was safe to continue through and join Doyle beneath barracks two.
Doyle figured the brotherhood were used to being alone out here, and never ran into too much trouble. But one could never be too careful. The patrols appeared to be on high-alert for a job that probably seemed a waste of time. But when Doyle considered what they were guarding, he knew that every hand-picked individual within the compound would be taking his duty seriously.
“You take the left, I’ll take the right,” Doyle whispered to Blaze as the pair of soldiers walked past their position. They had only seconds to react; the next patrol would be upon them soon.
As the soldiers approached barracks one, Doyle and Blaze crept up behind them, and in unison, covered their mouths with one hand and slit their throats with the other.
They were swift and silent. The soldiers never saw it coming. Blaze and Doyle kept their hands firmly placed over the mouths of the two guards and their bloody groans fell upon deaf ears.
They had to move quickly as the second patrol would be upon them any moment. The only thing working in their favour was the shadows between and behind the barracks. The spotlights on the perimeter fence faced towards the centre of the camp. That oversight was now proving a colossal mistake.
The soldiers were well and truly dead. Doyle and Blaze hurriedly concealed the bodies beneath barracks one, and scurried back towards barracks two.
The second sentry duty walked so close to the rear of building that Blaze and Doyle could have reached out and touched their boots. They gave them a few metres’ head start then scrambled out from the concealed space, closing in for the kill.
Blaze reached his hand around the guard’s mouth and slashed at his neck. Warm, sticky blood poured from the gaping wound down his plain black uniform. Blaze managed to keep him quiet while Doyle commenced his assault in unison, but he was slightly out of sync with Blaze, giving the startled guard a precious second of time to react after hearing his comrade’s muffled cries. The guard heaved himself forward, flipping Doyle over his shoulder and onto his back. Blaze left his kill lying on the ground and joined the fight, tackling him around the legs and levelling him to the ground.
The remaining sentry patrol came rushing over after they thought they’d heard noises. They rounded the corner from behind barracks three, four, and five, to see Blaze about to cave their comrade’s head in with a sizable rock. They raised their rifles to fire at the intruders.
Their rifles fell from their hands. Warm blood spewed from their throats as Ryan and Spider made sure they’d taken their last breaths. They’d spotted the sentries heading for Blaze and Doyle and were left with no choice but to risk exposure in the compound.
It was their lucky night.
Blaze repeatedly heaved the jagged rock down on the remaining guard’s face.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
The guard’s face was an unrecognisable pile of chipped bone and facial tissue, smeared by the colour of death.
“Quick, get them out of sight,” Doyle muttered at Ryan and Spider.
They promptly dragged the corpses beneath barracks number two.
Chapter 68
They regrouped back at the mess hall to get a clear view of the compound. They needed to assess the barracks where the prisoners were being held, and those that housed the brotherhood’s soldiers.
After a minute’s observation, Blaze had solved the puzzle. He’d noticed barracks one through to six had typical wooden-framed windows and basic doors, while barracks seven through to twelve had secure steel-barred windows and doors. It was an obvious deduction.
Before they’d left Manhattan for Tahawus, Blaze had devised a plan to destroy the soldiers that largely depended on the size and numbers of the camp, as well as a shit-pile of Lady Luck. Doyle was largely against the idea. he didn’t like going into battle so unprepared, but Ryan had agreed with Blaze’s logic.
They’d purposely chosen the midnight hour for their raid. Everyone bar the sentry patrols would likely be asleep. To the best of Doyle’s knowledge the camp had never been discovered up until this point, and he figured the soldiers would have a degree of complacency. Blaze’s theory was that for a camp to survive undetected this long, it had to have power and running water, meaning generators and tools for maintenance were likely kept on site. Ryan felt confident that they would find everything they needed to launch an assault on the brotherhood’s camp without needing to drag along any unnecessary equipment themselves, slowing them down and possibly giving away their position.
It was the moment of truth. The mission depended entirely on the next five minutes. But first Blaze felt he needed to check something—something that would significantly improve their chances of success. He boldly scurried up the small flight of steps onto the balcony of barracks one. The front door was made from solid timber. One edge was hinged to the left of the doorway; the right edge overlapped the front wall by two or three inches. Blaze noticed it wasn’t recessed into a doorframe as one would normally expect. This meant Blaze knew how to cut the brotherhood’s numbers in half with relative ease. Your lazy workmanship will be the death of you fuckers, he thought.
Blaze returned to the others and shared the good news, then led them behind the camp’s main operations hub, creeping through the safety of the shadows between its back wall and the perimeter fence. Their movements were much easier without the constant presence of roaming guards. Blaze and Spider ran across the fully-lit patch of earth between the operations hub and what he thought was the implement shed on the west side of the compound. It was made from green corrugated iron, about the si
ze of a standard double garage. It had two swing-doors set on hinges that met in the middle, secured with a chain and padlock.
“Shit!” Blaze cursed. “I left the bolt cutters in the fucking mess hall!”
“You mean these bolt cutters?” Spider grinned as he produced them from behind his back. He’d picked them up at the last minute after noticing Blaze had left them behind.
Blaze breathed a sigh of relief. “I could fucking kiss you right now.”
After he’d removed the padlock and opened the doors enough to slip inside, the familiar smell of machinery oil and chemicals filtered up Blaze’s nose. It reminded him of Ace’s workshop back home in Brighton.
“Look, over here,” Spider said, pointing out a row of faded-red gasoline canisters against the back wall. Five canisters were clearly labelled: DIESEL. The other five were unlabelled, which took Blaze’s interest. He crouched down and sniffed the yellow pouring spout on the first cannister. Spider knew from the grin on his face that they contained gasoline.
Gasoline meant fire.
Fire meant dead people.
The walls were laced with implements for building and maintenance of the camp. There were shelves with screwdrivers, saws, and power tools.
Ryan found the required items for the mission. “You were right,” he said to Blaze quietly as he spotted a shelf full of battery powered nail guns. “This place has everything you said it would.” He picked up a faded box containing the required gauge nails sitting on the shelf next to them.
“I got to hand it to you, Blaze,” Doyle said. “We actually stand a chance of pulling this off.”
“I wouldn’t speak too soon,” Blaze replied. “We’ve only got enough shit to kill half of those fuckers. That still leaves us with odds of four to one.”
“Ace and Trigger should reduce those odds considerably.”
“Let’s pray they fucking do.”
Blaze tested his Zippo lighter one last time before exiting the shed. They retraced their path along the rear wall of the operations hub, back to the mess hall.
Doyle was in charge of barracks one. Ryan barracks three, and Spider barracks five.
Blaze insisted he was in charge of the pyrotechnics.
Doyle, Ryan, and Spider patiently waited outside their respective barracks while Blaze doused all three nominated buildings in gasoline. They’d chosen every second building to create maximum confusion among all six barracks.
When Blaze had emptied the last cannister over the balcony of barracks five and made a trail along the ground to a safe distance back, Doyle, Ryan, and Spider quietly stepped onto the balconies of their respective targets, and with the nod of Doyle’s head, they nailed the piece of overlapping door to the wall.
POP! POP! POP!
The three men ran for their lives as the camp was suddenly woken to the blasting of air guns at their doors.
Blaze lit the trail of gasoline the second Doyle, Ryan, and Spider were clear. The flames tore along the ground with exceptional speed, breaking off into three separate paths towards the barracks.
WHOOSH!
The buildings went up in flames in a matter of seconds.
Chapter 69
The soldiers inside barracks one, three, and five frantically tried to bust down their doors as the flames started consuming the walls around them. Thick plumes of smoke weakened them considerably. The intense heat was the final nail in their proverbial coffins; the doors wouldn’t budge as their bodies gave up the will to fight.
The men from barracks two, four, and six ran for the fire hoses connected to the water lines beneath the main operations hub, which was when Trigger and Ace came to the party.
Trigger lined up the first brotherhood soldier.
BANG!
A perfect kill.
The soldier hit the ground with his brains smeared across the compound.
Ace followed suit.
Rat-tat-tat..
Rat-tat-tat.
Two more down.
Screams of terror sounded from the burning barracks as men started catching alight. First, their skivvies ignited, then their body-hair and flesh, melting their skin like a tender roast on Christmas day. Blaze took great delight in the chaos, watching on from the mess hall with Doyle, Ryan, and Spider as Ace and Trigger picked off the men scrambling round the compound like headless chickens. The soldiers aimlessly fired their weapons into the tree-line while others tried in vain to help their burning brothers. Everything was going to plan.
Until Ace got hit.
One of the panicking soldiers got lucky.
Ace fell, clutching at his chest, driving through every last leaf and branch during his descent to the bush floor, shredding the skin from his face till he ploughed into the dirt, head first.
His neck snapped on impact. In his final moments of life he looked up at the star-laden sky, making peace with his maker. That was one hell of a ride, he thought as he closed his eyes.
His heart stopped beating.
Trigger knew his best friend was gone. In a moment of pure rage, he unleashed his ammunition on the compound with great ferocity. Heads of brotherhood soldiers exploded in all directions. One soldier felt the full force of Trigger’s grief as a wave of bullets rippled through his torso and through his eye socket. Blood and bullets sprayed the soldier running directly behind him. He fell as a round pierced his abdomen. His face ground into the dirt, filling his mouth with sand and grit. He rolled over onto his stomach and reached for his rifle, getting a fix on Trigger’s position as his continuous muzzle flash painted the perfect target at which to aim.
The soldier unloaded his clip at Trigger’s turret. Splinters shredded the side of his face; the bullets made mince-meat of the surrounding branches with relentless force. The soldier reloaded and sent another scourge of bullets whizzing into the tree-line.
Trigger dropped his rifle and ducked for cover, crouching down, cradling his head in his hands. As he attempted to scramble down the tree, a bullet tore straight through his shoulder. The pain was unbearable. He cried out in agony, clutching his wound.
No sooner had the bullet hit him, than the oncoming bullets ceased. The soldier had bled out from his wound.
Trigger took this opportunity to scramble away. He was no good to the others without a weapon. He gritted through the pain while clambering down the tree with only one arm. He reached for a branch to steady himself, and slipped.
He fell to the ground.
THUD!
Trigger lay still for what seemed an eternity. I’m still alive, he thought as he regained consciousness.
Scarface had been the brotherhood’s leader for only a matter of days. He was mortified as he awoke to generations of hard work going up in smoke. Only a dozen soldiers remained with their lives.
With Ace and Trigger down, Blaze, Ryan, Doyle, and Spider were suddenly outnumbered, with no backup, wielding nothing more than pea-shooters compared to the brotherhood’s automatic weapons. They couldn’t help noticing the varying ages of the soldiers. Some were barely even teenagers. The majority seemed in their early twenties. Women with firearms came bolting out of the main operations hub to join in the fight. The only thing still in their favour was that their presence was still unknown.
Scarface gazed upon the barracks with brooding anger as the bloodcurdling screams of his brothers slowly dissipated. What seemed like a million questions were buzzing through his mind. Who is responsible for this? How could this have possibly happened? What happened to the sentry patrols?
Scarface called out to some of the remaining men. “Search the camp! The perimeter, too! If you find anyone still breathing, I want them alive! Understood?”
“Yes, sir,” the soldiers replied. They split up into small search parties and went their separate ways.
“We have to do something. They’ll find Trigger and Ace,” Spider said anxiously.
“There’s nothing we can do for them,” Blaze reluctantly said. “Besides, they’re probably dead.”
&
nbsp; “We can make it back through the tunnel if we go now.”
Doyle was almost ready to agree with Spider, but it was too late.
They heard a commotion coming from the tree-line on the other side of the camp.
“Fuck, they found Trigger,” Blaze muttered.
“And he’s still breathing,” Spider added. “Come on, Blaze, we have to do something! They’ll torture the fuck out of him till he gives us up.”
“He won’t give us up. He’s stronger than that.”
Scarface sniggered as the guards dragged Trigger along the ground by his hair. He took a run up and ruthlessly kicked Trigger’s face.
Trigger cried out; blood spewed from his mouth.
Ryan couldn’t watch as Scarface and the three guards took turns at beating him with their rifles.
“Who are you?” Scarface demanded.
Trigger didn’t utter a word.
CRACK!
He wore the butt of Scarface’s rifle across the back of his head. Blood poured from the ensuing gash.
“All right.” Scarface grinned. “I’ll ask you once again: who—the—fuck—are— you?”
Trigger spat a gob-full of blood in his face. “I’m your worst fucking nightmare,” he replied.
Scarface casually wiped the blood from his chin, then nodded to one of the soldiers. “I think this man deserves a rest. How about we fetch him a chair?”
The soldiers grinned with sadistic anticipation.
They promptly returned from the implement shed with a chair, a roll of duct tape, complete with a car battery with cable charges attached to the terminals.
“Strip him down,” Scarface demanded.
The soldiers held Trigger down while stripping his clothes, before strapping him to the chair. One of the soldiers sat down in front of him; he touched the two charger clips together to make sure they were active. Sparks ignited and flew through the air, sending the fear of God down Trigger’s spine.
“Last chance, tough guy.” Scarface casually patted him on his bloodied shoulder as if they’d been best mates for years. “Who are you? And why have you attacked my compound?”