“Are you sure?” the doubter asked.
Sam actually laughed. “Yes, I’m sure. I’ve known Lee Harden since the beginning of all of this. I was with him in Butler when Greeley invaded.”
“So that actually happened,” the woman said, flabbergasted. “I thought it was just propaganda.”
Sam shook his head. “I don’t know what they told you guys, but the truth is, Greeley invaded the UES, and we were forced to retreat. But Lee Harden and several others in charge are still alive, and there are still hundreds of people that are allied with him, and that number is growing every day.” Sam stabbed a finger towards the ground. “And they’re coming here.”
The doubter crossed his arms over his chest. “Hold up a second. Even if we accept what you’re saying—that Lee Harden is alive and coming here—he’s fresh off of getting his ass kicked out east. What makes you think he’s not going to get his ass kicked by Greeley again when he shows up here?”
“Because they’re undefended,” Sam replied, evenly. “Briggs sank nearly all his military resources into that invasion. He flew them out there, but didn’t have the fuel to fly them back, leaving Greeley guarded by a skeleton crew.”
Realization dawned on the features of the squad leaders.
“That’s why they got so desperate,” the woman said. “That’s why they conscripted us.”
Sam nodded. “I think they have some inkling of what Lee is planning, and they’re trying to hold off long enough for that army Briggs dispatched east to travel back from Georgia.”
“That shouldn’t have taken them this long. They could make that drive in a few days.”
“But…” Sam raised a finger. “Brigg’s army is trying to catch Lee from behind. Which is why they haven’t returned to Greeley yet.”
“Alright.” The doubter pursed his lips. “I’ll play along. You got six squads on the inside—seven, including your squad. I don’t know what your background is, but ours certainly isn’t military.” He looked at the others and they nodded in affirmation—they were untrained civilians with guns. “And besides that point, the only time they give us rifles is when we’re on guard duty.”
“Right,” Sam acknowledged. “But we know where the armory is. Chances are, at least one of us is going to be on duty when the attack starts. Which means we’ll have at least one squad of rifles—maybe more than that. If we work together, we can take that armory. It’s only guarded by a handful of Cornerstone, and they won’t be expecting an attack from the inside.”
The man that had arrived first spoke up. “What do we do if we don’t have rifles? Throw rocks?”
Sam shook his head. “You let me handle that. Right now, I just need you guys to commit.”
“What about casualties?” the doubter asked, looking suddenly uncomfortable with the prospect that fighting might include dying.
Sam stared at him for a long moment. He didn’t want to lie to them, but he also didn’t want to create unnecessary fear. Sometimes it was best to convince people of their invincibility. The United States military had been doing that with eighteen-year-old infantrymen for generations.
“It’s a gunfight,” Sam finally answered. “People are going to get shot. What happens when you get shot?”
“You die.”
“Wrong,” Sam snapped. “You keep fucking fighting. You know how much blood you can lose?”
Silence.
“You can lose about a liter before you’re even in danger of losing consciousness. So think about what a liter of blood looks like, and if you haven’t seen that much come out of you, then you have no reason to stop fighting.” Sam took a breath. “If we hit them hard and fast, if we give them more extreme violence than they can withstand, the better our chances are of coming out of it with minimal casualties. The more we freeze up and hesitate, the more likely we are to lose people. So when we do this, we do it mean. We go into it bloodthirsty and angry.”
The doubter seemed less doubtful now. But he still watched Sam carefully. Gauging him. “Have you ever done this before?”
Sam quirked his head to the side. “If you’re asking me if I’ve ever been embedded behind enemy lines and taken down a city? No. If you’re asking me if I’ve ever fought tooth and nail and killed others to stay alive? Yes. Several times. And I can tell you that the amount of aggression you choose to bring to the table is directly proportional to how many of your people are going to walk away from the fight. So don’t hold back. You have to go all in.”
The gathered squad leaders considered this in silence for a moment.
Sam was surprised when the doubter was the first one to speak up. “Alright. I’m all in.”
***
They slipped away from the burned out building around ten o’clock. They were as cautious exiting as they had been entering. When they were sure that they weren’t being watched, the group dispersed rapidly into the darkness.
Sam and Marie stuck together, hugging the shadows of the buildings. A bright moon was rising, peeking out from a thin layer of clouds that hugged the eastern horizon. It cast the buildings around them the color of bleached bones, the shadows sludgy and thickening as the cold light grew stronger.
“Still got an hour before shift,” Sam noted.
“Maybe you should get some sleep,” Marie said. “Stay at the flat. I’ll cover for you.”
Sam gave it honest consideration. His feet had that feeling about them—that low, chronic ache of having been on them for…how long had he been up and about? He’d lost track. His stomach felt acidic, his chest threadbare, his mind foggy. He could really use that sleep.
But he shook his head. “If it were any other time, I might take you up on it,” Sam muttered. “But right now is the wrong time to draw any sort of attention. I don’t want some Cornerstone fuck taking interest in our squad because we’re down a man.”
“You’re dead on your feet.”
“I can make it.”
“And what happens if shit pops off tomorrow?” Marie asked. “You gonna make it then? What’ll that be for you? Forty-eight hours awake?”
It was a real concern. This wasn’t just a question of toughness, and Sam knew it. He’d been sleep deprived before. It wasn’t a wise way to enter into a battle. After twenty-four hours without sleep, your brain was as inhibited as it would be if you were drunk. Reactions were slow. Judgements were off. Logic fled and emotion took hold.
And forty-eight hours, you might start to hallucinate.
But what option did he have?
“Point remains,” he sighed. “I’m not gonna do anything to draw attention.”
“I’ll tell them you ate something bad and you’re shitting your guts out. I’m serious, Sam. Don’t go on shift tonight. I’m officially mothering you. Be mothered.”
Sam managed a weak smile at her. “What would we do without you, Marie?”
Marie just stared at him. “So, does that mean you’re going to listen?”
His smile turned to a grimace. “Maybe I’ll cut out early,” he said. “After an hour or so, when we can be pretty confident that we’re not gonna get a surprise inspection on duty.”
Marie made a disgruntled noise. “Fine. I suppose we’ll call that the compromise. One o’clock, then. I haven’t seen a Cornerstone patrol after midnight, so if you cut out at one, you’ll be safe. If they do happen to show up—which they won’t—I’ll tell them you got the runs.”
“Alright,” he acquiesced, too tired to argue any more. “I’ll take that deal.”
God, but he hoped he could actually sleep tonight. The thought of being in the flat alone actually sounded restful. Without the others there to worry about, to listen to their snores and their shuffling about, he might actually be able to turn off his anxiety for long enough to get some shut-eye.
As they rounded the corner to the street where their flat was, Sam pulled to a stop.
“What’s wrong?” Marie asked, suddenly alarmed.
Perhaps it was the sleep deprivatio
n muddying his thoughts, but he didn’t quite recognize what he was looking at for a moment. Then he hissed out a “Ssh!” and put his hand on Marie’s arm, pulling her deeper into the shadows with him.
What was it that he’d just seen?
They pressed themselves into a shallow alcove that had once been the entrance to a coffee shop. The glass doors were boarded up with weather-beaten plywood. He didn’t know if anyone lived inside.
He leaned out of the tiny sliver of cover, revealing only the side of his face, which was still in shadows. Down the street. Down the sidewalk. The entrance to the apartment building.
There. That’s what he’d seen.
Just a tiny hint of a rifle barrel, protruding. The toes of a pair of boots.
“Someone’s standing at the entrance to our building,” Sam breathed.
Then, a voice from further behind them shot straight into Sam’s heart and froze it. “Sam!” the voice wheezed. “Sam, get your ass back here!”
Sam jerked to look behind him, and barely made out the shape of Jones, huddling behind a derelict dumpster, just a few paces from the mouth of an alley.
Jones’s eyes shot out to whoever it was lurking at the entrance to their building. He put his hand out and waved, as discretely as possible, and then disappeared.
But it had been Jones, right? Sam’s eyes weren’t playing tricks on him, were they?
“Was that Jones?” he husked.
Marie seemed to have already come to that conclusion. She moved back towards the alley, towing Sam behind her and sticking close to the shadows. They hustled around the corner, threading themselves through the gap between the dumpster and the wall of the building, and then skidding around the corner.
Jones stood there, plastered to the side of the alley, his knife in his hand, his face sweating despite the cool night air, his eyes wild.
“They came for us!” Jones whispered harshly. “They’re in the flat right now, waiting for you!”
TWENTY-NINE
─▬▬▬─
PREDATORS AND PREY
Sam’s insides were a slow-motion train wreck. Everything tumbling over and over, crashing into each other.
“What the fuck happened?” he said, numbly.
Jones’s face contorted. “I just told you what happened!”
“I mean…” Sam fought for clear logic. “Where are the others? Were there shots fired?”
Jones shook his head. “No. I was taking a piss off that little balcony in the back when they showed up. I heard them ram the door open, and I just vaulted over. Tried to climb a drain pipe. It didn’t work out.”
Sam glanced down, saw that Jones’s was holding his right leg slightly off the ground, not putting weight on it. Sam’s hands went to his head, fingers like claws raking through his thick, black hair. “Shit, shit, shit! Did anyone else make it out?”
Jones shook his head again. “Pickell and Johnson are still in there. I heard shouting, but no gunshots. I think they’re still alive.”
“Who the fuck did this? Did someone dime us out?”
Jones fixed Sam with a hateful gaze. “My guess is that Gabriella bitch you were talking to! What the fuck are we gonna do now?”
Sam spewed curses, twisting his body back and forth, as though he wanted to run, but couldn’t pick a direction. He got the sudden and alarming sensation that they were being pursued, and he slipped breathlessly to the corner of the alley and snatched a glance out again.
Nothing had changed. No pursuers.
One soldier—or Cornerstone operative, Sam couldn’t tell—positioned just inside the breezeway. Three stories above, the window to their flat was dark.
Sam jolted back into cover. “How many?”
Jones shook his head. “I have no fucking clue, man! I jumped off a balcony—I was more worried about that!”
Marie approached Sam, holding up her hands. “Slow down, Sam. What are you thinking?”
Sam thrust a finger towards the flat. “I’m thinking we can’t leave Pickell and Johnson in there!”
“We can safely assume there’s a squad in there. At least five.” Marie threw her hands wide. “There’s only three of us.”
“What about the satphone?” Sam demanded.
“What if they already found it?” Marie countered. “What if it’s already burned? You wanna risk your life for that?”
Sam shook his head, though, in that moment, he thought that he very well could risk his life for a chance to recover the satphone, let alone his two squadmates. The more he considered it, and the more he juxtaposed it with disappearing into the dark and leaving them in the hands of Cornerstone, the more he was certain that his mind was already made up.
“We can do this,” Sam urged.
“No, we can’t!” Marie snapped, though she kept her voice down. “Are you fucking crazy?”
Sam grabbed her by her arms, pleading. “They’re not expecting us.”
“What the hell do you mean they’re not expecting us?” Her eyes widened. “They’re waiting for us right now!”
“No, they’re waiting to ambush us because they think we’re going to come strolling up like a bunch of idiots.” Sam dove to his belt, ripped out his fixed blade. “I’ve got a knife. Jones has one. You have one. We can do this.”
Marie searched his face for sanity and looked like she didn’t find it.
But Sam could feel himself already hardening off to the risks and the consequences. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—let himself be beaten like this. If he ran, his mission was done. He would not have his satphone. He would not have his squad. He would not be able to coordinate. He would simply have to hole up and wait for Lee to rescue him.
He didn’t even have to tell himself it wasn’t an option. He knew it in his bones.
He looked at Jones, who seemed much more liable to do something crazy. Then at Marie. And he considered pulling rank, and telling her he was giving an order. But a leader doesn’t need to say these obvious things. A leader simply leads.
“We’re doing this,” Sam husked with complete and total finality.
***
The Cornerstone operative wasn’t really a Cornerstone operative.
Well, he supposed he was, technically, though he didn’t like to think of himself as such. Really, he was a young reservist for the Colorado Army National Guard. But everyone was now lumped under the same command structure, and they were told they were now Cornerstone.
Whatever. It didn’t make a difference. New boss, same as the old boss. Etcetera, etcetera.
He just liked to have enough food to eat. If you wanted to have food, and a safe place to sleep at night, well, you had to make some concession. So if they wanted to call him Cornerstone, that was fine. They could call him whatever they wanted, as long as they kept him fed and gave him a bed.
He stood at the entrance to the breezeway of the apartment building. Up above, his squadmates had taken down the traitors and were now holding them quietly in the darkness as they waited for the rest of the errant squad to show up.
Where the hell had they gone? It was less than an hour until their shift. They had expected them to all be present. But only two of the five were.
Had they gotten wind of this and bailed? But then, if they had, why would the other two have stayed? Besides, when they’d busted in the door, they’d seemed shocked as hell. He didn’t think they knew it was coming.
So he waited. And as he waited, the tension in his body began to abate. He kept expecting to see the three missing squad members come strolling around the corner from whatever they were up to, but every time he looked out and they didn’t show, he got a little more disappointed, and little more bored.
He was getting to the point where he was about to radio his sergeant and ask how long they were gonna sit here and wait, when he spotted a figure approaching from down the street.
It was a woman, he was sure of that instantly. The body shape, the gait—it was obvious.
Hadn’t they said there wa
s a woman in this crew? He was pretty sure that had been a part of their briefing. But the one approaching him now was alone. Not a part of a trio, as he’d expected.
He frowned as he watched her approaching, her head down, seeming not to take note of him. She didn’t seem overly cautious. Wasn’t even looking at the apartment—usually people looked at their destination.
He keyed his radio. “Hey, Sarge. Got possible contact down here. One female approaching. Standby. I’ll let you know.”
“Roger that,” his sergeant replied, sounding similarly bored. “Let us know.”
He angled himself in the entrance to the breezeway, so that only half of his body was sticking out, watching her carefully. Damn, but she sure as shit didn’t seem too terribly concerned with anything. If she was a part of a crew of traitors, you’d expect her to be a little more circumspect.
But who knew, right? They were amateurs.
As she drew within a few paces of the breezeway, he stepped out, raising his rifle to a low ready but not aiming it directly at her. “You,” he commanded. “Stop right there.”
Her head came up as though shocked out of a daydream. She glanced around, looking confused. “I’m sorry. Did I do something?”
“Where you headed?” He stepped closer to her.
Her feet seemed rooted to the ground. “I was heading home.”
“You a part of a guard squad?”
She shook her head. “No.”
He took another step forward. He was now all the way out of the breezeway. He lowered his rifle and stuck his support hand out, waggling his fingers. “Lemme see your ID card.”
“Oh. Right.” She frowned, looking down at her pockets. “Hang on.”
Her hands were in the pockets of a hoodie. She drew them out.
He tensed when she did, his eyes going to her hands. They were shaking.
His grip tightened on his rifle. But that was as far as he got.
***
It wasn’t clean, and it wasn’t pretty.
Jones snatched the operative into a headlock, and tried to ram the knife into the base of the skull, but the tip hit bone and the knife went slashing through the man’s scalp.
Lee Harden Series | Book 5 | Unbowed Page 30