by James Hunt
“Well, that was anti-climactic,” Coyle said.
Machine gun fire sounded outside as the group turned to look at the lobby’s entrance. Jim looked at Samantha and Annie.
“Stay here.” Jim rushed out to meet Brett and Twink at the door, where they watched the scene take place outside.
Brett motioned over for Jim to come see. “Looks like we’ve got company.”
The looters scattered and fired shots down the street at two armored trucks driving towards the building, randomly ramming cars out of the way. The trucks came to a stop just outside the building’s steps, where six soldiers from each truck poured out and began firing back at the looters. Two looters with assault rifles ducked behind the engine of a flipped car and began spraying bullets towards the soldiers. Other looters took position and shelter in shops along the street.
One of the soldiers heaved a grenade at the car where the two looters with assault rifles were huddled behind. The thud of the grenade hitting the other side of the car was masked by the looters reloading their weapons. Before the two of them could fire back, the grenade blasted through the side of the car sending bits and pieces of their bodies flying into the air.
Five of the looters that had retreated to the shops had run upstairs and smashed through the windows above. They opened fire on the soldiers below, catching them off guard. One of them took a bullet in the shoulder, while another soldier took one right through the eye. He dropped to the ground, lifeless.
Jim stood inside the lobby watching the fight take place. Gunshots, grenade blasts, and blood. This wasn’t Phoenix anymore.
“What do you wanna do, Jim?” Brett asked.
“We gotta go help them,” Twink said.
“We don’t know who started firing first,” Jim said.
“Yeah, we do. It was our guys. The soldiers started shooting at the truck the moment they saw it,” Brett said.
Then Jim saw Hult run around the front end of the truck to reload his magazine. Sweat dripped off his chin as bullets rained down on him and his men. Hult only looked up for a split second, but he saw them.
Jim immediately ducked down. “We’ve got to get out of here, now!”
The group took off around the hallway and right before they turned the corner, they heard the crash of glass and concrete behind them. The armored truck rammed into the lobby, and Hult rushed out with the rest of his men like a swarm of bees.
Jim and Brett kept back to help provide cover while Coyle and Twink took the front. Annie stayed glued to Samantha. They ran down a hallway to a pair of exit doors that lead to an atrium. Jim glanced back and saw Hult a few hundred feet behind them.
“Stop!” Hult screamed.
Jim fired a spray of bullets, sending the soldiers ducking behind whatever cover they could find.
Twink was the first through the exit doors, followed by Samantha and Annie. Samantha pointed towards a stairwell to their left. “That’ll take us to the parking garage at the street entrance,” she said.
“If there are as many cars in there as there were in the street, I’ll be able to hotwire one of them,” Twink said.
“Let’s go find our ride,” Jim said.
When Hult burst through the atrium doors, they were gone. His breath was short as he ran around, trying to find them. His men finally caught up with him.
“Spread out!” Hult said.
Hult turned around and eyed the stairwell door where Jim had just gone down.
The parking garage door flew open and Twink came barreling out. There were cars everywhere. Coyle, Samantha, Annie, Brett, and Jim came through right after. They trotted down the slope of the garage towards the exit where they saw the fading light hit the street outside. The distant sound of screams and gunfire had increased.
Twink found a truck, smashed the window, and popped the lock. He dropped under the dash and ripped out the panel underneath, exposing a cluster of wires.
Jim walked closer towards the opening of the garage. He started to smell something. It was faint and distant. Smoke? he thought to himself. When he stepped out onto the street, he saw plumes of smoke rising into the sky. The black pillars polluted the oranges and reds of the fading sunset-colored backdrop.
Looters were tossing lit torches and Molotov cocktails into stores along Main Street. Men with bandanas around their faces were tearing down stop signs and anything else they could with sheer muscle. The fires were spreading.
Twink kept twisting wires together, and then there was a spark underneath the dash as the engine turned over and came to life. “Got it!”
They had just piled into the car when Hult and three of his men came barreling into the garage from the stairway door.
“Jim!” Brett said.
Jim whipped around and dropped behind a yellow parking pillar. He opened fire on Hult and his men. Bullets were sent back in retaliation, peppering the concrete around Jim.
Twink slowed down enough for Jim to hop in the truck bed, and they took off. Twink took a right out of the garage away from the looters and headed for the highway. Samantha opened the small, sliding window of the truck.
“Are you all right?” she asked.
“I’m fine,” Jim said.
“Anyone know where we’re going now? Cuz we sure as hell can’t go back to the camp. Hult will have radioed what happened by now,” Brett said.
“No, I don’t think so,” said Jim.
“What are you talking about, Jim? You just shot at a sergeant in the United States military. That’s a federal offense. We’re all fugitives now,” Brett said.
“I think Hult is in on what’s been happening. I think he wants this,” Jim said, pulling the drive out of his pocket. “He wants the drive so they can finish whatever it was they were planning. Matt told me he thought there was a high-level leak in the military ranks. I think Locke and Hult are in on it.”
“Holy shit,” Twink said.
Annie smacked Twink on his shoulder.
“Sorry,” Twink replied.
“So how do we know if Hult and Locke are really in on it?” Brett asked.
“We check in at the base and we wait. If there isn’t a commotion, then we know Hult didn’t report us leaving, meaning he wants to find us himself. If there is, then we turn ourselves in and get the drive to Matt so he can do find out who’s behind this,” Jim said.
“Fugitives on the run. My mom would be so proud,” Coyle said.
The truck drove off towards the setting sun as the fires began to spread across downtown Phoenix behind them.
Chapter 4
Jim used a pair of binoculars but didn’t see any movement on the ground. The most activity he saw was of some troops sent to escort a group of firefighters into the city. There was a full blaze of fury in the distance. The smoke from the fires blanketed the night sky, and the glow from the flames washed over the desert in an unearthly orange tinge.
Jim climbed back down the dune to where they were camped. Brett and Twink did an inventory of what ammo and supplies they had left while Annie sat curled in a ball in Samantha’s lap.
“Mommy, when can we go home?” Annie asked.
“I don’t know, sweetheart,” she responded.
Jim walked over to Coyle, who was leaned up against the wheel of the truck with his eyes half-closed. Jim slid down next to him.
“How are you doing?” Jim asked.
“I could use some of that mush right about now,” Coyle replied.
Jim rested his head back on the metal siding of the truck. The glow from the fires rose up above the dunes. The shadows from the city danced across his face. He wondered how many died for some mad man’s search for power.
“I can see why you got out. This job’s very high risk,” Coyle said.
“That’s not why I got out.”
“Why then?”
“I joined the Navy because my father was branded a coward. I thought it was my duty to join and restore what pride I had to my family’s name.”
“
That’s why you got in, but why’d you leave?”
“The same reason.”
Jim helped Brett find a spot in between two dunes, and they dug out three trenches about six feet in length and three feet wide. They piled the sand one foot-and-a-half high on three sides of each of the trenches.
Brett and Twink each had some ponchos in their packs, and Jim used them to cover their trenches for protection from the sun. Brett, Twink, and Jim would sleep under the ponchos while Coyle, Annie, and Samantha slept in the truck.
It was early morning when Jim finally awoke. One glance at the smoke-blackened sky told him that the firemen hadn’t been able to stop the blaze. Twilight from the morning daybreak sparkled on the desert sand. Bits of light struggled to shine through the thick smoke in the sky. Jim brushed the sand out of his hair.
Brett and Twink were still snoring in their sand beds. Samantha and Annie were sound asleep in the backseat of the truck. Coyle was propped up in the passenger seat with his mouth hanging open and drooling. Suddenly, Jim felt the hard iron of a pistol pressed to the back of his skull.
“You’re getting easier to sneak up on, Farr,” Hult said.
Hult had his 9mm pistol with his finger on the trigger. Four of his men tore the ponchos off Brett and Twink’s shelter before they could wake and disarmed them with rifles pointed at their heads.
“For your sake, I hope you found what you were looking for,” Hult said.
“Find what?” Jim replied.
“Turn around,” Hult ordered.
Jim kept his hands in the air and slowly turned his body to face Hult. He saw Coyle, Annie, Samantha, Twink, and Brett lined up on their knees with their hands behind their heads next to the truck. Tears streamed down Annie’s face.
“You really are a fucking pain in my ass, you know that?” Hult said.
Then, without any explanation or warning, Hult clicked the safety on. He lowered his pistol and holstered it. He took Jim’s gun, dropped the magazine out, cleared the chamber, and tossed it back to him, though he kept the magazine.
“We need to talk. Boys?” Hult motioned over to his men, who lowered their weapons.
Coyle kept his hands over his head even after the men walked in front of him. “Is this a trap? Coz it feels like a trap.”
“What is this?” Jim asked.
“This is my mission. Locke told me to keep an eye on you and make sure you and the girls were safe. He thought there was a high-level leak. How do you think you got to speak to Matt by yourself without any guards listening in? Who do you think the guard called when you were leaving the camp?”
“You were helping us this whole time? Jesus, Jim, you tried to kill him,” Coyle said.
“That reminds me.” Hult threw a right hook into Jim’s jaw that knocked him to the ground. Jim wiped the blood from his lip, and Hult extended his hand to help him up.
“Now we’re even,” Hult said.
“Why should we trust you?” Samantha asked.
“I lost seven men in the city. I’d been with those soldiers for years. If it wasn’t for Locke’s orders, I’d kill you on principle,” Hult replied.
With Hult confirming Jim’s suspicion of a mole, they all agreed that trying to get Matt out of the camp wasn’t going to happen. And with Phoenix burning behind them, they wouldn’t be able to get him back to his office to run the program anyway. Matt would have to do it from the camp.
“One of the guards is Locke’s man. We can sneak Matt out when it’s his shift and get him over to a station to do what he needs to do and find the bastards behind all of this,” Hult said.
“How do we get back in?” Jim asked.
“They think I’m out looking for you. Give me the drive, and I’ll keep two of my men here to guard you. I’ll tell them that I couldn’t find you and get the drive to Matt tonight,” Hult replied.
“No, we don’t know who’s involved in this, and if you get caught, you’ll need all of the help you can get. Brett, Twink, and I will come in with you,” Jim said.
It was settled. Coyle would stay back with Samantha and Annie while the rest of them went to the camp to give Matt the drive and find the source of the orders. Jim himself would come back to get the girls and Coyle once it was safe. If he didn’t return before tomorrow, or he was killed, then one of Hult’s men, Twink, or Brett would come back with a safe word that only the group knew. They would then take the truck and immediately head back to the refugee camp. They would speak to no one except Locke.
Hult and his men had hotwired two sedans from the garage after they had lost the armored trucks earlier. Jim opened the doors of the sedan and brushed empty coffee cups off the back seat. Brett sat in the passenger seat while Twink joined Jim in the back. Hult drove while the rest of his men piled inside the other car.
“Jesus. How many Starbucks breakfast sandwiches can one man eat?” Brett asked.
As the cars got back onto the main road, they headed for the expressway that would take them around the outskirts of the city. It was here Jim saw just how huge the fire had become. When he was in school, Jim remembered hearing about the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and how it wreaked havoc on the districts of the city, killing hundreds and causing hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of damage.
He wondered if this is what people saw on the outskirts of Chicago that day, fires rising into the sky with the flames engulfing buildings, cars, and people. How could an entire city just burn like that? Then again, just a few weeks ago Jim thought a Naval base could never be leveled on American soil. He was experiencing a lot of firsts lately.
It only took them about ten minutes to get back to the base from where they were at in the dunes. Jim was right about them not checking who they were, although the guards at the gate did a thorough inspection of the vehicles. Hult brought Jim, Twink, and Brett back to his tent along with his men, then left to check on Locke’s man to see when his shift would start. Jim’s leg bounced up and down nervously. He declined an MRE from Brett. He didn’t have an appetite.
***
Coyle leaned on the front driver side of the truck while Samantha and Annie sat inside it.
“When will I get to see Daddy again?” Annie asked.
“Uncle Jim is getting him right now,” Samantha replied.
Annie jumped from her mother’s lap and gasped. Samantha grabbed her shoulders. “What’s wrong, baby?”
“We forgot to tell Uncle Jim to get Tigs!”
“I’m sure Jim will remember to bring Tigs with him, Annie. You don’t have to worry about her.”
***
The tent flaps flew open as Hult entered. “Locke’s man says his shift starts in one hour. He’s got watch for four hours, and halfway through, Matt’s scheduled for a bathroom break. We’ll get him to a computer station then.”
“Where’s the station at?” Jim asked.
“We’ll use one of the cubicles across the hallway where the holding cells are. We can put him on a computer there,” Hult said.
“I’ll be outside with you,” Jim said.
“Farr, it’s too risky,” Hult replied.
“I have just as much to lose in this mission as you do,” Jim said.
“What if somebody sees you? Hult’s supposed to have not found you, remember?” Brett asked.
“Nobody recognized me when I came through the front gate. I’ll just make sure I keep some extra gear on while I’m out,” Jim said.
***
When Annie had finally fallen asleep, Samantha peeled her arm off the hot leather and slid out the door quietly. Coyle was still leaning up against the truck when she got out.
“I’m really beginning to hate the desert,” Coyle said.
He took a swig from the cantina and passed it to Samantha. She didn’t say anything as she rested her head back on the window, taking a swig.
“It’ll be fine. Despite my jokes, Jim’s actually pretty good at what he does,” Coyle reassured her.
“Being a marine mechanic?” she repl
ied.
“No, I still think he’s terrible at that,” he said.
That got a small smile out of her.
“He got me out of San Diego alive. He saved a half dozen people along the way and, despite a few setbacks, he’s kept us going since we’ve arrived here. He’ll bring Matt back.”