“Not my idea of an ambush,” he complained as he reached for the battery-powered bullhorn at his feet. It would have been a lot safer to just fire them up. He faced Farmer; “tell Reed’s vehicle to move up close enough that they can get a lock on one of the Humvees.” He pointed at Uwasi and Elliot, who were each holding a LAW rocket. “You guys target them as well.”
He thumbed his radio. “Pro, have Rachel mark the shooters, hold fire unless they shoot.”
“Copy, Pro out.”
They were hidden in the trees south of the interstate, about a hundred yards from where the convoy had stopped. Uwasi and Elliot were already moving out, trying to get closer to get a better shot with the short-legged LAW.
He put the bullhorn up and aimed it down the freeway. “You are surrounded! All vehicles have been targeted by stand-off weapons. We don’t want to hurt anyone. If you stand down, you will be released and can return to Charlottesville. The tankers are going to stay right where they are.”
He looked at Farmer. “Reed?”
“He’s moving up, not there yet.”
“Flash your headlights if you have heard me, otherwise I will open fire.”
The driver of the nearest tanker truck flashed its headlights. He could only assume whoever was leading the convoy in the Humvees had heard him as well; they were even closer. He waited another ten seconds and repeated the warning.
Farmer was slapping his leg. “Reed’s got a lock on the lead vehicle, the one in the fast lane.”
“Thirty seconds until we fire. Un-ass your vehicles and walk forward! Leave your weapons. You will not be harmed.”
Nothing happened, but he could see the two figures in the cab of the closest of the lead vehicles, and they appeared to be arguing.
Come on, guys, don’t make me do this. “Twenty seconds!”
Farmer slapped his leg again. “Reed says the two truck drivers are out of their vehicles and moving forward.”
He couldn’t see anyone on foot yet, but someone in one of the escort vehicles had seen the truck drivers approaching. The passenger door opened, and whoever stepped out began yelling at the unseen truck drivers to get back to their trucks.
“Ten seconds!” he yelled. “You have ten seconds to get out and lay your weapons down, or Javelin missiles are going to light up each and every one of you. If they don’t kill you, the fireball from the tankers will. Get out! Five seconds.”
He should have opened with the threat of burning to death. The doors to the two Humvees popped open. One machine gunner dropped down inside to exit that way; the other crawled farther up and out and hopped down off the back of the vehicle. The man who had been screaming at the truck drivers lifted the barrel of his weapon and pointed it at his colleagues, yelling at them to pick up their dropped weapons.
The man fired once at the road. Jason cringed, half expecting either Rachel or one of the Marines to open up.
He hefted the bullhorn. “You have three seconds to drop your weapon.”
The man panicked and spun in the direction of his voice and loosed a salvo of automatic fire that smacked and whined off the roadway, fifteen yards from his position.
Shit . . . “Rachel, take him.”
The report from Rachel’s .338 Lapua overrode and put a bookend on the bouncing echoes from the M4. He risked a look up and over the rock he hid behind. The rest of the enemy had their hands over their heads and were looking down at the body of their former leader.
He pushed his radio. “Reed, move up slowly. Everyone else, break cover and move in. Hold fire unless fired on. Sniper team hold.”
“You’re really going to let us go?” Whoever Rachel had killed had been the leader of the convoy, that much was clear. One of the truck drivers was speaking for the rest of them.
He just nodded in reply and looked to where Farmer was patching up one of the men from the escort vehicles who had been hit by the ricochet from the dead guy’s warning shot. The bullet had popped off the road and clipped the guy in the ass. The man hadn’t even realized he’d been hit until the shock wore off. By the time his guys had closed in, he’d been on the ground and screaming.
“He going to be alright?”
Farmer nodded back at him. “Creased him, he’ll be fine.”
He turned back to the gathered crowd of prisoners and addressed the truck driver who had spoken. “We’re going to let you go, just like I said. Your vehicles are staying here though.”
“You’re going to make us walk?” One of the younger men didn’t sound too happy at that prospect.
The convoy’s new leader looked like he wanted to take a swing at the man who had spoken up. “Thompson—shut it.”
“We’ll transport you as far as Yancey Mills, and drop you off. That’ll leave you with about twelve miles to walk. I’d do more if I could,” he explained. “Under the circumstances, you’ll understand that we don’t want to get any closer to Charlottesville, unless it’s for our own reasons.”
“I get it.” The truck driver nodded. “It’s much appreciated.”
“We aren’t at war with you people, just your leadership.”
“And anybody who sides with them,” Reed added. “Charlottesville isn’t going to control anything but Charlottesville. If people want to leave and return from wherever you were taken from, they’ll be allowed to do so.”
The truck driver just looked back and forth between him and Reed. “What’s that mean?”
“In short, turn over your leaders to us, and Charlottesville gets new leadership decided by you all.” Jason flashed Reed a smile. “As my friend said, we aren’t looking to be warlords, but we aren’t going to allow anyone else to be either.”
The one the driver had called Thompson spoke up. “Who are you guys? If you think Miss Cooper is going to lie down for you people, you’re crazy.”
The truck driver stared down Thompson but then looked back at him. “He ain’t wrong, they’ll fight.”
Lucas walked over, stuffing his first-aid kit back into his bag. “Fine by us; it gets really boring running roadblocks like this. But how many of you people are we going to have to kill just so this Miss Cooper can be in charge?”
Jason took a step towards Thompson and stared at him until the man nervously looked away. “That’s really the only issue here.” He tried to make eye contact with each and every one of their erstwhile enemy before stepping back and pointing at one of their Humvees. Salguero was just finishing up dismounting the M240 machine gun.
“It’ll be a tight squeeze, but you’ll all fit.” He pointed at the truck driver. “You’re driving. Stay in between our vehicles, or we’ll turn you into Swiss cheese. OK?”
“Yeah. . . I can do that.”
Northern Virginia
Carla had come to a decision. She wasn’t going to sit here as a prisoner waiting for these fools to find the courage to kill her; not without trying to strike a blow. On that score, she figured it was only a matter of time. She was a threat to them. Not anything like what her people would do to them, but a threat nonetheless. It was past time for her to start acting like it.
In the excitement and activity of moving their settlement, things had gotten hectic outside the doors of her hotel room prison cell in Tysons. She’d had a view of the parking lot below the mall and had watched for nearly two weeks as these people loaded up all they had collected and moved. It was an endless cycle of material being piled up outside on the parking deck, until it was loaded up in anything with wheels and disappeared out of her line of sight. She’d timed how long it took some of the pickup trucks, which she assumed could be unloaded at their destination quickly, to return for another load. Wherever their new home was, it wasn’t far.
She couldn’t help but be impressed with the volume of gear they had collected, nor could she deny the pride she felt in knowing she was, in large part, the reason they were running away. Her own people might have lost the advantage of surprise with this settlement, but in the end, it wouldn’t matter. The people
she watched out the window, her grips who kept her fed, had every right to be scared. These people’s wariness and a new address wouldn’t save them. That was enough for her to hold onto, enough to keep her going.
She’d been a little concerned when some of their looters returned with a convoy that included some military equipment. But the armored trucks and two APCs had moved out within a few days of arriving as the crowd around Tysons first thinned, and then disappeared. Her minders thinned out too. What had been someone bringing in a tray of food, watched over by an armed guard while another stood in the doorway, became just a guard in the hallway.
The day they’d actually transferred her, the double guard had been back, but the woman who’d been sent in to collect her tray from the night before was new and hadn’t noted the missing butter knife. The knife, hidden in her sock, and the small duffle bag of clothes she’d been allowed had made it with her to her new cell. Wherever “here” was; they’d put a hood over her head during the transfer and driven around for a lot longer than necessary to try and confuse her.
The new cell was a serious downgrade from a room in the Ritz. Whatever type of building she was in; the room had a concrete floor and a heavy-gauge steel door. It looked like a storage room of some sort that had been cleaned out to make room for the fold-up cot and a single chair to sit on. Bathroom trips were guarded affairs down an austere hallway, with no view of the outside world. It was a miserable existence, or would have been had she any intention of remaining a prisoner.
Within a week, the cheap butter knife was ground down and honed to the sharpest double-edged stiletto she and the concrete floor were capable of. By the end of the second week, she knew the schedule of her guards as well as they did. The minders bringing her food and water varied widely, but were almost always women. A few were roughly her build. The armed guards, of whom she had so far counted four different individuals, always remained outside the door. There seemed to be three men and one woman in that rotation.
She had a plan, but she needed the female guard to be on duty to have any chance of overpowering her—and she needed that to happen when the heavy-boned, short- statured woman, who was a mirror for her own build, brought her meal. The right combination had happened once already, but the guard in the hall had been talking to another unseen individual at the time. Bad luck; but she knew the schedule and only had to be patient.
Michelle walked into the town house that she and Daniel had claimed for themselves. It was just down the road from the resort and retirement home that many of their people had chosen to live in. Others had opted for a new subdivision of single-family homes on the far side of the resort. The town houses were nice and had filled up quick. Daniel had put a hold claim down on the end unit for Rachel and Jason. Michelle was smiling to herself in the entry hallway.
“Must have been a good day,” Daniel teased her. “You haven’t yelled yet.”
She smiled back at him, and held an accusatory finger out in his direction. “I just had to listen to Marli and that worthless layabout she’s shacked up with complain that their unit’s refrigerator hasn’t been wired up to the grid yet.”
“And yet you’re smiling . . . You didn’t hurt them, did you?”
“No, as a matter of fact, Hoyt stepped in. He explained his people are wiring the houses as fast as they can, but priority is being given to those who have been working, and not, as he put it, sitting at home reading back issues of Home and Garden and working on their tan.”
Daniel could only laugh. Most of their people took pride in how hard they were all working to make a new home. A very small minority were close to getting an attitude adjustment. “Well, all right . . . See? All you have to do is delegate.”
Michelle walked towards him with her arms out, asking for a hug.
“Daniel, this might actually work,” she mumbled against his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her.
“Things are coming together,” he agreed. They just needed the time, as Colonel Skirjanek had pointed out, “to dig in and sink some roots.”
“Did you ever think we could really make a go of it?” Michelle pulled her head back and looked at him.
“We still talking about our little community here? Or . . .?”
“No, I mean yes.” Michelle smiled and patted his chest. “You, I take for granted. For the bigger picture, I think I’ve just been waiting for the other shoe to drop.”
“I know you have,” he said. “You know I’ve been there. I thought I was going to lose you to it. You have to believe in what we’re trying to do, Michelle. It’s the only way I managed to pull myself back. Without hope, we aren’t really living. If we give in, and just accept our lot without pushing back? I’m not sure what that makes us, but I know I didn’t like the way it made me feel.”
“It’s all so fragile,” she whispered.
Daniel tightened his hug. “I think it always has been, the old world just lulled us into believing that we were somehow invincible. We’re awake now.”
Michelle squeezed him tight. “Yes, we are.”
“You hungry?” He pulled back. “One of the Russian ladies next door made some pelmeni and invited us over.”
“I saw the crowd coming in. What’s pelmeni?”
He shrugged. “Something that didn’t start in a can.”
They were coming down the front steps and waving at the dinner crowd who were across the narrow street with red solo cups in hand, when both their radios exploded in a jumble of excited voices talking over each other and washing each other out. Michelle stopped and pulled hers off her belt. She’d heard one word that sent a chill down her neck—Carla.
She looked up at Daniel as she pushed the talk button, confused by the strange expression on his face. His hand shot out, punching her in the shoulder before stepping in and knocking her aside. The blast of a gun split the air as she was falling. She slammed into the bricked sidewalk on her side, and caught a glimpse of Daniel struggling with someone on the ground as she rolled.
She’d made it to one knee and was moving to help when another shot went off. She froze in horror as a fountain of blood erupted out of the middle of Daniel’s back, and the reality of what she was seeing hit home. Daniel’s flailing stopped, and she could only watch as Carla’s face appeared from under his shoulder as the woman fought to lever his weight off.
She saw the gun Carla struggled to pull free from where Daniel had trapped it against her body. The woman’s face was a mask of rage, and she was screaming something that she couldn’t hear. Michelle was staring at those empty eyes when several gunshots rang out. She didn’t even flinch when Carla’s gun fired; she watched, detached, as a round sparked off the pavement next to Carla’s shoulder, followed by two more shots that turned the woman’s head inside out. She could only stare until she was aware of hands pulling her away. Daniel’s dead face and the pool of blood spreading out beneath him was all she could see as a waterfall of white noise drowned out everything. Her lags failed and strong hands caught her.
*
“Tell me what you need, it’s yours.” Skirjanek looked back at him with an empty mess-kit cup held against his chest. Jason’s still had half a finger of whiskey in his. Gene and several others from Gabe’s security team had shown up a couple of hours ago, having driven down from Northern Virginia with the news that Daniel had been killed and Michelle seriously wounded by Carla.
Gene, whom Jason still thought of as “Miami,” had reported that Carla had somehow killed the woman who had brought her evening meal and then overpowered her guard. Wearing the clothes of her first victim, the crazy bitch had the run of the place for an hour before her escape had been discovered. The only thing that made sense to them was that Carla must have spotted Michelle and followed her back to the home she shared with Daniel.
“I know he was a friend.”
Jason just nodded and slammed back the whiskey. “Drew . . . thank you. I think right now, I have to get Rachel and Pro back up there to say goodbye. Espec
ially Pro; Daniel was the first decent person the kid came across after the suck.”
Skirjanek flashed him a look of confusion. “I thought I’d heard you’d come across Pro first.”
Jason remembered that night when he’d “met” Pro, when he’d gotten the kid captured. “I had.”
Drew poured him another finger of whiskey. “You can’t blame yourself for not being there.”
“I don’t. I blame myself for not putting a bullet behind the woman’s ear the moment we knew who she was. She was that poisonous.”
“We’re going to see more of that shortly.”
“We will,” he agreed. He swirled the whiskey in his cup and looked back at the man he’d decided to follow. “Please tell me you aren’t going to give this Cooper character a soapbox, put her on trial, detain her . . . what have you.”
Drew shook his head with a sad smile. “Not in the cards. If I could, she’d be dead already. With luck, we’ll get her own people to do that for us.”
That wasn’t going to happen any more than the sheep had risen up against Sheriff Bauman. People were just too damned scared. They were fed, housed, and had a modicum of safety in a world so ugly the air still tasted dead.
“You and I have a very different relationship with luck.”
“Go say your goodbyes, Jason. Take one of the JLTVs, and be careful. Your man who brought the news down reported taking fire just outside of Gainesville. When we settle our present issue, I think these nuisance-level road gangs either need to be brought into the fold or pushed elsewhere.”
Jason stood slowly. “The to-do list never gets any smaller, does it?” It would be dawn soon. He could afford to let Rachel and Pro sleep before he’d share the sad news.
Seasons of Man | Book 2 | Reap What You Sow Page 23