by John Cutter
An agonizing three seconds — until his chin was level with the top. He lashed his right hand out, found a crack in the stone, gripped, and pulled, clambering with his feet…
And then he was crawling over the edge, onto the top of the cliff.
Vince lay there panting for ten long seconds.
You’re a damned fool, Bellator, he told himself. But so far, still alive.
He got to his knees and glanced around. The top of the ridge in this area was ruggedly flat, like a modest plateau. No one was in sight. But he could see the hulking shape of the camouflaged helicopter about fifty yards away.
Vince got up, wiped sweat from his forehead, unsheathed his knife, and started for the heli, thinking he could use it as cover to get nearer the emplacements.
Then he stopped. It occurred to him that they might have surveillance cameras around the chopper.
He changed direction, heading south on the uneven stone of the escarpment’s top, trying to move as quietly as he could. Much of it was cracked, pebbly granite, broken up by red-barked shrubs and witch hazel. As he moved to the west, he spotted the hump-shapes of the concrete and steel emplacements up ahead, still some distance off.
The witch hazel — shrubby trees — grew thickly closer to the emplacements. He moved in a crouch, using clumps of the small trees as cover, picking his steps as carefully as he could in the frail light.
He stopped from time to time, listening and looking. He heard men’s voices, the words unintelligible, but the timbre hinting of casual conversation. He saw no cameras pointed his way.
Vince eased forward, seeing a pool of light from the back of the emplacement. The gun battery was a low, semi cupola of reinforced concrete, with gun slits in the western side for light machine guns and sniper rifles. The interior was recessed into the top of the ridge, bunker-style; the back was open, with green tarps that could be hooked to the back of the opening in case of heavy rain. He was glad the rain had stopped. If the tarp had covered the back entrance to the emplacement it would have complicated matters.
As he got closer — fifty feet away — he could see two men in paramilitary uniforms sitting on benches to either side of the guns. One short, one taller, both crewcut white guys. They had a shelf of equipment handy. Vince couldn’t see it clearly, but he figured the gear was binoculars and night-seeing goggles. The militiamen were sitting facing one another, eating sandwiches and talking.
Vince planned to kill them silently if he could. Unnecessary gunfire would alert the other emplacement, maybe the whole compound.
Knife in hand, he stole yet closer, keeping to the south so that the man on the left would be unable to see him approach. At twenty feet off, he could hear what they were saying. “So Herb says, ‘There’s two uses for liberals, and one of them is sucking dick.’”
This was apparently a punchline, as both men burst into raucous laughter. Vince used the noise to creep up even closer. He switched his knife to his left hand, holding it by the blade, then took the Desert Eagle in his right, holding it by the barrel.
“One time I was in this bar in Vancouver, Washington, place called the Ice House, and we—”
The man broke off, staring, as Vince jumped down into the cupola and threw the knife with his left hand at the man across from him. It sped true, and bisected the militiaman’s throat, right through the voice box — something Vince only saw peripherally as he spun to his left and brought down the pistol’s butt hard on the other man’s forehead. Hard enough to smash it in so that blood and brains spurted and the man crumpled, dead in under a second.
Vince stepped back to avoid the blood, frowning to find some of it had gotten on the bottom of the seven-round clip in the Desert Eagle.
He knelt by the dead man’s legs and used the corpse’s trouser cuffs to carefully wipe the blood off the clip of the big pistol. Blood drained from the bodies and down the flood drain in the concrete floor of the emplacement.
Retrieving his knife, he wiped it off and took one of the night-seeing SWIR devices from the shelf. He hung them from his belt, then began moving across the terrain toward the other emplacement, staying west enough that they wouldn’t likely spot him.
Vince was aware on some level that he’d shifted into a certain highly specialized state of mind. It was a state of heightened acuity; of taut reflexes and crystalline objectivity. His pulse was up and he tasted metal in his mouth. But it wasn’t from fear. It was the watchful intensity of a professional warrior. It was the mental and physical state of a specialist.
He started moving faster, almost running, not wanting to be caught in the open if one of them spotted him. In a minute he’d reached the igloo-like curve of the second emplacement’s semi-dome — and then one of the men chose that moment to step up onto the ridge for a cigarette.
The unlit cigarette dangling from his lips, the gangly militiaman stared in shock, seeing Vince. He opened his mouth to shout and only got a gurgle out as Vince’s spinning knife buried itself in his throat.
But a second man, powerfully muscled and thick-necked, blurted, “Son of a bitch!” and pulled his pistol as Vince turned to him. Vince had been planning to use the Desert Eagle as a hammer again; now he had to reverse the gun in his hand, which took half a second, and the man had time to get off a shot. The bullet cracked by Vince’s head, and he fired back — the big Desert Eagle .50 round slamming into the militiaman’s breast bone. The man went staggering back, his face contorted by pain and fear. He fell onto his back, over the steel trapdoor that led to the lower levels.
The bullet had passed through the body-builder and into the concrete wall, punching deeply between the gun slits. The .50 was a powerful load in a powerful handgun.
Wondering if anyone had heard the shot down below, Vince holstered his gun, retrieved his knife, cleaned and sheathed it. He noticed a select-fire extended clip AR-15 leaning against the wall. Why not?
He dragged the muscle-builder off the trap door —the big guy’s dead weight took some real effort to move. He found the trap door locked.
Vince dug in the pockets of the dead man, came up with a small ring of keys. He unlocked the trap door, lifted it up a few inches and peered through. He could see the empty top-flight of the stairs, lit by a dull-yellow overhead light. He listened and heard nothing from below. He opened the trap door the rest of the way, pocketed the keys, took the AR-15, slinging its rifle strap over one shoulder, and climbed down the ladder.
He took the assault rifle into his hands, checked the clip — it was fully loaded — and set the fire to semi-auto. Then he started down the stairs, reviewing the top floor in his mind. There was the upstairs barracks to the south, but there would likely be no one in it. Everyone bunked in the first-floor barracks. At this hour there might still be Brethren lingering in the cafeteria and kitchen, also on the top floor. Most of the base’s troops would be done with dinner and probably in the downstairs barracks, prepping for training.
Vince hoped he didn’t have to kill the two Brethren-loyal Shield Maidens. Or Shaun Adler.
The alert would have gone out on him. He’d probably have to kill anyone he encountered. If Deirdre were still alive she’d probably be down in a basement cell or in Gustafson’s office. And that office would be Vince’s first stop.
Vince reached the third floor, stepped through the door from the stairway — and immediately saw Rocky Chesterton, coming down the corridor from his right.
Rocky was a craggy-faced man, tall and wide-shouldered and deft in his movements. And he was raising his Glock — but as he was doing that, Vince was aiming.
Vince squeezed off an AR-15 round and it caught Rocky in the forehead. The man’s head jerked back and he convulsively squeezed the Glock’s trigger. The bullet spanged off a metal brace in the wall and cut through a corner of Vince’s leather jacket, just missing his waist.
Three shots, one ricochet. So much for stealth, Vince thought.
Rocky fell, and gun smoke swirled in the corridor. Behind Vince was the
empty barracks; ahead was the cafeteria and kitchen. Past that, the administration offices and comm center.
He got ten steps down the corridor and saw a man’s head sticking out of a doorway; one of the Brethren looking nervously around. Vince had heard the red-haired guy called Smitty.
Vince fired from the hip, missing, and Smitty ducked back in the cafeteria. He slammed the door shut. Vince heard the door locking.
Vince started jogging now, passing the cafeteria door, hearing shouting from inside. He reached the L-turn in the corridor that would take him left, to admin and comms.
He stopped just before the corner, listening. Someone was shouting from down there too. He glanced behind him; no one was coming out of the cafeteria — not yet. He stepped around the corner, swinging the rifle as he went so it pointed down the corridor.
Three men were coming his way. He didn’t know them — probably from one of the outlier groups who’d just come into town. He mentally framed them as Tan Guy, Stumpy Guy, and Bared Teeth. Two of them had Glocks in their hands, Bared Teeth carried a tactical shotgun.
Vince flicked the AR-15 to full-auto. Stumpy Guy and Vince fired at the same moment, and Vince felt something burn a groove along the skin of his left shoulder as he fired a burst at the group. Stumpy Guy screamed and went down, clutching his belly, Tan Guy spun around, impacted hard in a shoulder. Bared Teeth was unhit; he had both hands on his gun and was carefully aiming.
Vince threw himself flat, firing another burst as he went down, and Bared Teeth lost his grimace, the bullets shattering his mouth and blowing out the back of his head. He writhed and fell flat on his back. Tan Guy got up to one knee and Vince fired a short burst, shooting him through the heart.
Vince stayed stretched out on his belly, waiting — and there was Marco Ambra, stepping out the door to the administration center, about forty feet away, aiming his Glock at Vince’s face.
Vince fired, the rifle at an awkward angle, the burst tearing into Marco’s right leg, knocking him off his feet. Marco fell face down, groaning, getting off a shot that zipped through the air above Vince.
Vince got quickly up on his elbows and fired, taking off the top of Marco’s head before he could use the Glock again.
Marco flopped face-down, instantly dead.
Vince got to his feet, checked the load on the rifle — the clip was empty. He tossed the AR-15 aside and drew the Desert Eagle just in time to fire it at Bjorn, the strapping near-albino militiaman now running toward him with an Uzi.
The .50 round caught the guy in his gut, tearing him open and spinning him around. Bjorn fell heavily on his side, groaning.
But as Vince walked up to him, Bjorn raised the Uzi. Vince kicked the weapon aside and shot Bjorn in the top of his head. At that range the big pistol made quite a mess.
He stepped over the body to the wall close to the open admin door. He stopped there, listening. No sound from within.
Vince looked around the edge of the door — saw no one down the hallway. Hearing voices from the stairway, at the second-floor level, he picked up the Uzi in his left hand, walked over to the stairwell and saw the shadows of men with guns coming up. He fired the Uzi randomly down the stairs, emptying the clip. A spray of bullets ricocheted below and the shadows receded. That would keep them for long enough, he figured.
He tossed the Uzi aside, went back to Marco’s body, and found another set of keys on a chain attached to his belt. He broke it free. Vince holstered the Desert Eagle and picked up Bared Teeth’s tactical shotgun — a Mossberg 500 — and noticed that as well as a full magazine, it had five extra shells attached to the weapon’s receiver by an elastic “side-saddle”.
Shotgun in hand, he went to the door of the administrative offices. Standing to one side, he unlocked Gustafson’s office door. He took hold of the knob, stepped to one side, pulling the door open wide. There was no response from inside. He stepped across the hallway, leaned over enough to see into the room. No one was there.
Vince went to the comm office, unlocked it the same way, opened the door the same way — also no response. He looked inside. No one there, just the electronics. PCs, printers, the tactical radio set up.
He thought about using the comms to try again to get in touch with the feds. Or maybe he could break into a computer and get some more data. But he was no hacker and didn’t have time to try. The enemy would be coming up those stairs soon enough.
Let’s get this done, he thought. Cut through the tango presence, find Deirdre and Bobby. The longer he waited, the more time the Brethren had to get their defense together.
Vince went to the corridor — and fired the tactical shotgun, instantly, shooting from the hip, at the four men at the top of the stairs just twenty feet away. The big gun bucked in his hands and one of the men exploded at the solar plexus. Vince pumped another round into the chamber as he brought the shotgun to his shoulder. A man behind the falling Brethren got off a shot that clipped Vince’s right earlobe.
So much for getting my ear pierced someday, Vince thought, firing the Mossberg at the shooter. The man’s face vanished in a welter of red as Vince stepped to his left, turning his body to make a smaller target as the guy with the Glock in his hand fired, the round going where Vince had been a moment before. The last man was farther down the stairs, seemed frozen with indecision.
Vince fired at the tango with the Glock, pumped the shotgun, and fired again. The four men lay still, sprawled half on top of one another, twitching in death. As he thumbed shells from the side-saddle for reload, he recalled that he’d used a tactical shotgun in combat in one other fight, against a gang running guns to Boko Haram in Nigeria. Both times, it had been a handy weapon in close quarters.
He stepped carefully over the red-splashed, oozing bodies, ignoring the rank smell of shattered intestines, and went a few steps down, careful to watch the stairwell below. Blood splashed from the higher stairs; thin red waterfalls. As he went, Vince mentally reviewed the second floor: library, video center, conference room, extra storage. Nothing he needed to do here except fight his way through.
He got to the bottom, turned toward the door to the second floor — and a man stuck his plump, gaping face around the doorframe. Vince shot the NeoNazi in from about seven feet away. Blood and brains splashed and the man fell heavily to the floor.
Vince stopped, pumping the shotgun and listening. It was quiet, now, on the second floor. He hunkered down, grabbed the dead man by the back of the neck, and dragged him across the floor, the process making a big red smear on the concrete like something in a finger painting. He transferred the shotgun to his left hand, took hold of the dead man by the back of the belt, flipped his gurgling body around, and carried it close to the door, sticking the remains of the guy’s head out into the hallway at waist level. An AR-15 rattled from the left and what remained of the corpse’s head disintegrated. Vince dropped the body and waited, transferring the shotgun to his other hand.
“I think I got him!” someone yelled.
Vince stepped into the hallway and fired the shotgun at the man with the AR-15 near the library door. The militiaman screamed and staggered. He didn’t catch the full load because he was about fifty feet away, so Vince took the shotgun into his left hand as with his right he pulled the Desert Eagle and fired, shooting the swaying militiaman through the heart. His target went down — and so did a second man running out of the library, Vince’s shot cutting through his neck, the .50 round tearing away so much the head flopped over, held by a rag of skin and flesh, before the body dropped.
Vince turned to the right, firing the Desert Eagle instantly at another man stepping out of the video room doorway. The shot struck the NeoNazi in his right shoulder, the powerful impact spinning him around so that Vince’s next round took him through the back.
Vince stepped back through the doorway to the stairwell. Softly singing “All Along the Watchtower”, he reloaded the Desert Eagle and then the shotgun. He holstered the big pistol, stuck the barrel of the shotgun
out into the hallway to see if it might make someone fire.
No response. He eased to the right against the wall by the door, peering down the hall to the left. He saw no one except the two dead men. He repeated the process on the other side of the door, looking right. Someone was ogling, down the hall — and Vince snapped a shot at him with the Mossberg. A chunk of doorframe vanished but he missed his target. The guy pulled back, yelling, “Oh shit!”
Vince turned, started down the stairs to the next floor. A startled man — Andy Kayson, his name was — stood on the next landing below with an AR-15 pointed at the floor. He was tanned, but for his perpetually red cheeks. His blond surfer-style hair was combed straight back, his neck decorated with Maori tattoos.
Kayson dropped the gun and raised his hands. “Don’t shoot!”
“Hello, Andy,” Vince said. “You just made what might be the first wise decision of your life. How many men down on the first floor?”
“Fuck, I don’t know — maybe four or five. The General’s got most of them organized out front. He thinks he’s gonna get you when you come out. He’s thinking of calling in the sheriff.”
“So Woodbridge is in with you guys?”
“I guess. He’s chummy with the General. What — what you going to do to me?”
“Depends on what you do now. You know the combination to the armory?”
“No — Wynn said it was something about ‘Crystal Night’ or something like that. Didn’t hear nothing else.”
“I see.” Kristallnacht, Vince guessed. Named after broken glass from all the Jewish-owned stores when the Nazi pogrom was carried out on the nights of November ninth and tenth, in 1938. Was that the combination? 9101138?
“Okay,” Vince said. “Now drop the Glock too. Carefully.”
Gingerly, Kayson took his Glock out of its holster and dropped the handgun on the stairs.