Everyone scrambled to their vehicles.
“Mr. Spivey,” the agent said, “you are with me.”
Spivey watched as Corporal Armstrong headed down Volunteer Boulevard toward her car. He jogged after her. “No, thanks. I’ve got a ride.”
The agent threw up his hands, but he didn’t have time to waste to make Spivey comply with his order. He quickly climbed behind the wheel of his black sedan and flipped on the emergency lights in the back window.
Spivey caught up with Armstrong.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“I’ve got questions.”
“Then I suggest you catch a ride with somebody who’s got answers.”
“You’re my ride. Mr. FBI says so.”
She looked over her shoulder and watched the black sedan tear out of the parking lot and rev its siren to get pedestrians to move out of the way.
“Fine, but keep your mouth shut.”
They reached her silver Dodge Charger and got in. Before Spivey could ask his first question, Armstrong had the car on the sidewalk, headed for Neyland Drive.
Spivey held on for dear life. “You’re hiding something.”
“I’m driving is what I’m doing.”
“You didn’t tell the whole truth back there.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Dani’s message, what was it, exactly?”
“I told you.”
“No, you didn’t. Not exactly. What was the message?”
She took a sharp turn to the left and slammed Spivey against the door in the process.
“What aren’t you saying?”
“How much I’d like to shoot you, for one.”
“Goddamn it. I’m not a cop. I’m not a fed. I’m basically a fucking outlaw. I just happen to be employed by the federal government to break laws. That’s the only reason I’m not in jail. I have no interest in getting you in trouble or ending your career. I wanna help Dani. That’s all I want.”
Armstrong punched the gas on a straightaway and drifted between the slower-moving traffic. “She used a term that she knew would get my attention. Something that only means something to me and a few other people. I talk too much, and I can ruin a lot of lives.”
“Welcome to the club.”
She took her eyes off the road for a split second to see if his eyes said he was a man who could be trusted. She finally gritted her teeth and said, “The message was she found more inventory at Wayne Drake Community College.”
“Inventory?” Spivey recalled the message he deciphered about inventory in Mac’s message. “Like the inventory kept in a bunker?”
She felt a chill go up her spine. “You know about that?”
“Not enough.”
“It’s better that way.”
“So, this inventory, it’s guns?”
Armstrong raised an eyebrow. “No. It’s not. That’s why I’m confused by Dani’s message. It doesn’t make sense, and I can’t explain it to you. All I can think is that Dani wanted me to know that things have gone bad, as bad as they were the last time we worked together.”
“All right, let’s try another tack. Why would my rich-as-shit boss be interested in some inventory in a bunker?”
“Who’s your boss?”
“D. B. Nolen.”
“NGI, D. B. Nolen?”
“One and the same.”
Armstrong gave this new information some thought. “His name’s never come up before, but it wouldn’t surprise me.”
Frustrated that she still wasn’t giving up anything in the way of useful information, Spivey said, “Here’s what I know. A cracker named Harley Pike has my boss, D. B. Nolen, nervous as hell about something, and Nolen doesn’t get nervous. I wanna know what that something is, so I can bring Nolen down. You can help me or you can help Nolen by not helping me. As bad as I am, Nolen is the fucking emperor of bad.”
“Did you say Harley Pike?”
“I did.”
“And you’re saying that Nolen is tied to some inventory that was kept in a bunker. You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
“Then Nolen isn’t just bad. He’s a psychopath.”
“Explain.”
Armstrong didn’t respond.
“Help me take down this psychopath.”
She sped through a red light without letting up on the gas, causing cross traffic to screech to a halt. “More than a year ago, Dani, me, her department, and a couple of hired-gun crackers broke up a human-trafficking ring.”
“These crackers wouldn’t be called Step and Kenny, would they?”
She gave him a quick furrowed-brow glance. “You know them?”
“Let’s just say we’ve broken a law or two together.”
“You know them, all right. Anyway the Pikes, Bonnie to be more specific, ran the ring. They kept the girls in a bunker on top of a mountain, and they referred to them as their inventory.”
“Wait, wait,” Spivey said as he settled into a horrifying thought. “A mountaintop?”
“Yep.”
“Did it have a landing strip?”
“It did,” she answered, sounding confused.
“And a barn that looked like it could fall down in a stiff breeze?”
“You know it?”
He nodded. “I know it. I’ve been there. Flew in with Nolen…probably just a little over a year ago. I never left the chopper.”
“Fuck me.”
Spivey nodded in agreement. “Fuck me.”
Chapter 92
The sounds of gunfire had the campus scrambling. No one could determine where the shots had come from. A college staff member who had preached the need for good guys with guns pulled his concealed weapon, and shot blindly, hoping he was at least pointed in the right direction. More panic ensued.
Nola, still pinned down behind the SUV, watched in horror as a herd of students fled toward the parking lot in the vicinity of the Gray Rise bus. She took a deep breath, stepped to the back of the SUV, fired two quick shots at the door of the bus, and then shouted to the oncoming students. “Get back! Get back!”
The students did not hesitate to comply with her demands. They dropped their books and backpacks and stormed back toward the campus, screaming louder than they had been previously.
The staff member fired back at Nola, striking the car parked across from the SUV.
“Fuck,” Nola said as she ducked back behind the SUV.
Chapter 93
A crisscrossing wave of students slowed Dani’s progress as she chased after the two Gray Rise militiamen dressed in Wayne Drake gear. She saw them reach the student union and remove their backpacks before entering.
The one thought that went through her mind as she pushed her way through the crowd of frightened students was that there was a real possibility that there weren’t just two shooters. She had no way of knowing how many had disembarked the bus earlier. As far as she knew, there could be dozens of shooters getting into position on campus in areas where they could do the most damage.
In between calming the students who crossed her path, she scouted the rooftops for any signs of shooters. When she reached the doors to the student union, she was both thankful and alarmed that she hadn’t spotted any.
The screaming inside the student union was more chaotic thanks to a limitless echo effect. The high-pitched screeches endlessly bounced from wall to wall to wall. It was a chorus of sheer madness. She held her weapon down but at the ready as she backed against the wall near the staircase.
A gunshot blast followed by a gut-wrenching wail filled the atrium. Dani dashed to a conclave of sofas and cushioned chairs and squatted next to a couch that smelled of sweat and a mixture of deodorants and perfumes. Peering over the top of it, she saw a male student squirming on the heavily lacquered floor. He’d been shot in the leg.
“You shot me, dude!” he yelled at another student.
“Dude, I thought you were a guy, man…one of the guys…the d
udes with guns.”
A series of gunshots came from the second floor. Dani zeroed in on the loft walkway as a deluge of students rushed toward the staircase.
Dani stood with her firearm still held to her side. “Put your weapon down!” she said to the student now standing over the kid he had wounded.
He backed away wide-eyed and pointed his weapon at Dani.
“Down!” she said still not raising her own weapon. “Down. Nice and easy. Just lay it on the ground.”
More gunshots from the second floor.
The student hesitated only out of fear. After struggling not to hyperventilate, he placed the gun on the floor, stood for a brief second, and then ran as fast as his feet would carry him to the exit.
Dani sprinted to the wounded student. “You’re going to be okay.” She snatched up the gun the other student had laid on the ground and stuffed it into her jacket pocket. “Do you have a weapon?”
“No, man…I don’t know why he shot me…”
She looked at his wound and felt a tiny amount of gratitude that he’d only been grazed at the hip. “You’re fine. You’ll need a few stitches, but that’s it.” She whistled to a group of students hiding behind another conclave of furniture. “Get him out of here.”
Two girls quickly scrambled on their hands and knees to the wounded student and dragged him to relative safety among the furniture.
Dani headed for the staircase.
Chapter 94
Armstrong did know a shortcut to Wayne Drake, and she had no issue with going off-road when the traffic did not cooperate. Spivey was both frightened of and impressed by her wanton disregard for his and her own safety.
She handed him a phone at one point and said, “Our two associates may be closer than we are. Call the last number dialed.”
He examined the phone before dialing. “Why does this look like a burner?”
“Step and Kenny aren’t exactly citizens in good standing. Wouldn’t be a great career move if their number came up in my phone records.”
He found the number and pushed the call button. “I’ve got a few friends like that.”
“I got a feeling people say the same about you.”
The call was quickly answered. “Yeah,” Step Crawford barked.
“Dani’s in trouble.”
Chapter 95
The telltale sound of the bus’s hydraulic door opening made Nola’s stomach twist into a tangled nest of knots. She took a quick peek to see where the good-guy staff member was. When she didn’t spot him, she stepped out from behind the SUV, spotted a figure moving off the bottom step of the bus, and quickly fired a single shot, hitting the militiaman in the cheek, causing him to collapse in the doorway of the bus. When a second militiaman tried to pull him back inside, Nola fired another shot and then frantically reloaded her weapon.
The Gray Rise member who’d tried to pull his fellow soldier back into the bus managed to retrieve the fallen man’s gun before scrambling out of sight.
Nola heard a pop right before she felt a stinging in her side. As she attempted to breathe in, her lungs refused to cooperate. She pounded her chest and fell to a knee, desperately trying to suck in some air.
The good guy with a gun came running out from behind a row of cars. “Yes, I got you, motherfucker! I got you…” His head exploded as he took a bullet from an open-carry demonstrator’s long gun across the street.
Finally able to take in tiny wisps of air, Nola crawled under the SUV and emerged on the other side. She quickly examined the area where she had felt the stinging, and was never so happy to be wearing Kevlar.
Chapter 96
Dani fought her way through the door leading to the staircase as a stream of students filed out, knocking on another to and fro, and stepping on one another as they desperately tried to make their way to safety. The problem was they had no real idea where that safety could be found. They just knew they were running from something.
There was no calming them. Dani tried to reassure them as they filed by that it would all be over soon. They just needed to slow down and help one another out. Some listened and pulled the fallen off the floor, but most couldn’t control their fear and gave in to their flight instinct.
Dani climbed the stairs against the tide, holding her gun high and finger off the trigger. Reaching the second floor, she stepped out into the corridor that led to the walkway overlooking the atrium. A young man wearing a sleeveless, blood-soaked Wayne Drake T-shirt cowered on the floor and wept fiercely. With her eyes down the hall, Dani knelt beside him. “Have you been shot? Are you okay?”
The young man nodded. “I ain’t been shot. I just…they knocked me to the ground.” He lifted his head and spread his bloody lips apart so Dani could see his chipped tooth. “I got stepped on pretty good.”
Dani gave him a fake grin. “You’ll live. Tell me what happened.”
The kid looked down the hallway. “Two fellas went that way. Bigass guns. I ain’t never seen nothing like it before. I know AR-15s, I know AKs. This is something new altogether.”
“Two. That’s all you saw?”
Nodding, the kid said, “That’s all I saw, but I heard some people talking after the gunshots went off. I can’t say if it’s true or not.”
“If what’s true?”
“The talk is that there’s a bunch of them at the end of the hall, in the student council room.”
“How many’s a bunch?”
The kid shrugged. “Can’t say, but they were in the middle of a meeting when everything started.”
Dani patted him on the shoulder. “All right, get out of the building. Encourage as many folks as you can to do the same. Don’t cause a panic. Just tell them there’s nothing left to see in here. You got it?”
The kid nodded, and Dani helped him to his feet.
She turned down the hallway and slowly moved toward the student council room, turning back once to watch the kid enter the stairwell, his backpack scraping the doorframe as he hastily squeezed through the opening.
Fifteen seconds passed before the door to the stairway reopened, and the kid shouted, “Gray Rise, cunt!”
Dani turned back to see the chip-toothed grin of the kid staring back at her, the butt of an assault rifle perched against his shoulder.
“We’re taking back America, so bitches like you can suck a dick…”
She fired her weapon and hit the kid in his mouth. After watching him fall to the ground, she rushed to him and pulled his rifle out of his twitching hand. Whispering, she said, “Looks like you won’t be taking back shit today.”
She looped her arm through the strap of the rifle and threw it over her shoulder, once again slowly making her way down the corridor to take on a roomful of shitheads hell-bent on taking back America.
Chapter 97
Step and Kenny were on the stretch of road in front of the campus ten minutes after receiving Spivey’s call. As far as they could tell, there were no cops to be found. Driving up to the campus, traffic was a little heavier than usual, but other than that, there was no indication anything was wrong.
At the traffic light turning in to the first entrance to the campus, Kenny leaned his head out the open window and said, “Sounds like a pep rally or something. Hollering and carrying on like someone’s set on fire.”
Step peered out Kenny’s window from the driver’s seat and saw a flood of students moving through a field behind a building, heading toward the railroad tracks. “Some shit’s going down somewheres.”
He turned his head to the demonstrators on the side of the road ahead of them. A group of women were yelling at a bunch of armed crackers. Step punched the gas.
“Got a bead on something?” Kenny asked.
“Yeah, a bunch of dumbshits with guns. We’re bound to know one or two of them.”
He screeched to a stop in front of the dueling protesters. The women were blaming the gunshots on the open-carry group, and the men were blaming the women for not letting good folks protect them
selves. Step scanned the crackers for a familiar face. He found one. “Darnell Jr.”
A man with a long torso and curved spine hobbled in Spivey’s direction, his rifle at the ready. “Yeah, friend, I know you?”
“Step Crawford. I knew your daddy way back when.”
Darnell Jr. nodded. “You come to join us?”
“Maybe. What’s with the commotion on campus?”
“Shots’ve been fired. Everyone’s running around like they ain’t got no sense. We’re gonna move in. You packing?”
Step pulled his handgun out of the back of his pants. “Always.”
“Good. We already took out one of the fuckers in the parking lot.” Darnell Jr. pointed in the direction of the bus. “There’s another pinned down behind a car.”
Step turned and surveyed the area. “That’s a good distance. You hit your target from here?”
Darnell paused before admitting he hadn’t been the one who fired the shot. “That fella in the back. He done it. Didn’t give it a thought.”
Step looked at the man who Darnell pointed out. He was different than ninety percent of the other open-carry demonstrators. He was beefy, fit, neatly shaven. He dressed the part of the gun nut, but he didn’t really fit in otherwise. Step called out to him, “What’s your name?”
The man didn’t answer. Instead he shifted his gaze to the man standing next to him. Step gave the shooter’s neighbor the same grade, he kind of looked the part, but he didn’t really fit the part. After that, Step spotted at least eight others amongst the open-carry protesters who didn’t belong.
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