Long Way Home (Matthew Riker Book 3)

by J. T. Baier

“What’s my role in phase one?” Donnie asked.

  “Phase one is going to be up to me and Luke. It will be a quick surgical strike. I’ll move through the house clearing out any armed men. Luke will have my back.”

  “So I’ll just be waiting around?”

  “Your moment will come when the cartel arrives. Those men will be expecting trouble. They will also greatly outnumber us. We will need to keep them confused and off-balance if we want to have any chance to beat them. You and Luke will be positioned around the farm with assault rifles. We will keep you just outside of the fence. You can take one or two shots at a time and then move quickly. Then take another shot. The two of you will be spread out. This should give the illusion of a larger force attacking. If we properly block their exit with our equipment we should force them into the main building as a defensive position.”

  “What will you be doing?”

  “I’ll be using one of the sniper rifles. I’ll keep them from getting to any of you, and I’ll thin their numbers. I have some ideas for the rest of the plan, but I want to see what we have to work with on that farm before I make the final strategy.”

  The room was silent for a moment; the members of the team, exchanging nervous glances.

  Luke broke the silence. “That is a pretty good plan.”

  Riker smiled. “Thanks, Star-Lord.”

  Everyone in the room looked confused. Luke waited for a moment and then asked, “Star-Lord? Is that like a codename or something?”

  Riker shook his head. “I thought you were quoting Guardians of the Galaxy. Sorry that none of you are familiar with one of the best movies the MCU has to offer.”

  Megan laughed out loud. “Hardened killer and movie dork; that is an unusual combo. I think I have the trump card for the strangest family.”

  Everyone in the room laughed. Riker turned a light shade of red. “Laugh all you want. It’s still a great movie.”

  “Don’t worry coach,” Luke said. “We’ll follow your instructions. It’s just nice to know that you are actually human.”

  The word coach struck Riker. It was the second time Luke had used it. Apparently he was filling in for his fallen mentor in both action and name. He hoped that his team wouldn’t be let down by his leadership.

  “If anyone has questions about what they need to do next, now is the time. We have until morning before they arrive. We will prepare in every way we can, but these men will not hesitate to kill any of you. When the fighting starts. I need all of you to remember that. Do not hesitate and do not try to spare them. We will have one shot at this. Let’s make it count.”

  35

  The afternoon sun beat down on Riker as he waited crouched in the bed of Luke’s truck. The trailer with the small excavator rattled and clattered as it thumped along the uneven stretch of road behind them. Riker kept his body relaxed and his breathing easy, his thoughts drifting back to the many types of transports he’d ridden to various combat missions. There had been cargo planes, helicopters, transport trucks, trains, and ships of all shapes and sizes. But hiding in the back of a vehicle hauling construction equipment was a new one.

  He glanced up and saw Luke in profile through the truck’s rear window. It felt strange going into battle with his old friend, but he much preferred being on the same side. They’d been through too much together to be enemies now.

  Luke glanced back as if he could feel Riker looking at him and spoke through the rear window, which was slid open. “I’m going to ask one last time. You sure about this, man? There are eight guys in there. I’d feel a hell of a lot better if I was going with you.”

  “I’m sure. This is how it has to be. Just keep the ones at the gate occupied for five minutes or so. It shouldn’t take longer than that.”

  Luke shook his head and let out a chuckle. “I like your confidence.”

  As much as Riker would have liked to have someone by his side when he attacked the compound, it simply wasn’t feasible. This would require stealth and taking out the enemy quickly, quietly, and hopefully via non-fatal means. That was a big ask, and Luke simply didn’t have the training for it. Riker knew from painful recent experience that the man could throw a solid punch, but this required more finesse and a skillset only Riker possessed.

  “Here we go,” Luke said a moment later.

  Riker felt the truck slow and turn. He knew that they had arrived at their destination.

  “‘Sup, Luke?” a low male voice said. “What the hell is all this?”

  “Doc’s orders,” Luke replied. “Wants us to dig through the wreckage of the place. Recover what we can.”

  “So you brought a freakin excavator.” This was a new voice, and it came from the other side of the truck.

  Though Riker was crouched too low to see anything, he’d been here recently enough to be able to clearly picture the scene in his mind. The gate to the compound was in front of them, and the two men guarding it stood to either side. According to Luke, these two were the best men left on the crew, so it made sense to have them guarding the entrance. Anyone who wanted to proceed inside would have to get through them before dealing with the others. Theoretically. Riker planned to bypass them completely and save them until he was done with the others.

  “I figured the excavator will make short work of it. Unless you’d prefer to dig through the charred remains by hand.”

  “Not especially,” the second man said. “I’m not complaining. I’m just wondering how we’re going to get her through the gate.”

  Luke opened the door to his truck. “I was thinking about that myself. The trailer isn’t going to fit through the gate very easily. I say we unload her and drive her through on her own.” Luke stepped out of the truck, leaving it running, and headed back toward the trailer. “Help me get these straps off.”

  There was a moment of silence. Then Luke spoke again.

  “Careful you don’t smash your fingers.”

  That was the signal phrase Riker had been waiting for. As soon as he heard it, he threw a leg over the passenger side of the truck, slipped over, and dropped to the ground on the far side. A quick glance over his shoulder told him the two guards were both busy releasing the straps tying down the excavator and were paying him no mind. Even Luke was not looking in his direction. Riker quickly made his way to the front of the truck and through the open gate, favoring speed over silence. The truck’s diesel engine would cover any sounds his feet made as they crushed over the gravel.

  Once he was through the gate, Riker didn’t bother looking back. His targets were ahead of him, and he needed to put his focus there. This job would require speed and precision. He clocked the position of his targets. Two silos stood just past the burnt facilities Riker had so recently destroyed. According to Luke, a pair of men would be guarding each silo, with a final pair sitting in a truck between them, radio in hand, and ready to assist either if the need arose.

  Riker moved quickly, keeping near the tree line as he made his way past the house and to the silo on the right. Two men stood leaning against the silo, both looking bored. Both had pistols on their belts but neither was holding a weapon. The truck was just where Luke had said it would be--just between the silos. Riker could just see the back of the bed from where it stood, and he figured that if he played the angles right, he could take out these two men without the ones in the truck being able to see.

  Using the silo to block him from the sight of the guards, Riker headed toward them. He reached the silo and slowly worked his way around it. When the first guard came into sight, Riker saw that this was going to be easy. The man was staring off into space, his eyes distant.

  Riker attacked suddenly and viciously, slipping an arm around the man’s neck and squeezing, cutting off the air and any chance for a scream. A moment later, the man was unconscious. His partner glanced over, and his eyes widened at the sight of Riker attacking his friend.

  Riker let the unconscious man fall and crossed the ten feet between him and the other man in an instant. The
man’s jaw dropped, but he didn’t have time to utter even a shout before Riker’s hand slammed into his throat. He dropped to his knees, hands going to his injured windpipe. In an instant, Riker had those hands bound behind his back with a zip tie. He quickly bound the man’s ankles the same way. He pulled out a bandana from his pocket, one of several he’d brought for this purpose, and tied it around the man’s head, forming a gag. He did the same to the unconscious man, and then he moved on.

  Crossing the space between the two silos was going to be the trickiest part of this operation. He needed to double back and make his way behind the truck so that the men inside didn’t see him. He did so carefully, his eyes on the two figures inside the cab. If they spotted him in their rearview mirror as he passed, they gave no indication.

  Riker hurried to the second silo, taking the same approach as he had the first time, carefully working his way around the structure to hide his approach. When he spotted these two guards, he shook his head in disgust at their lack of professionalism. They were sitting on folding chairs and playing cards on a crate placed between them.

  This time, Riker didn’t even bother with subtlety. He grabbed the first man from behind, choking him out in full sight of his partner. By the time the other man got to his feet, his buddy was unconscious.

  Riker charged ahead, knowing that he’d have to handle this fourth guard slightly differently. As he reached him, he grabbed the man’s right shoulder with one hand and punched it hard with the other. He heard an audible crack as the shoulder dislocated.

  The man started to cry out, but Riker quickly drove the air from his lungs with a punch to the stomach. A moment later, Riker had him on the ground, hands and feet zip-tied. The way his hands were tied behind his back would be quite painful with that dislocated shoulder, which was exactly what Riker was counting on. When he put on the man’s gag, he left it loose, knowing the man would be able to work it even looser with his tongue, and eventually, he’d be able to push it aside.

  Riker secured the unconscious man, then worked his way around to behind the truck with the final two guards and waited.

  Attacking two men in the cab of a truck wasn’t an ideal situation. They had the protection of the vehicle, and there was no easy way to get inside to take them out, at least not without killing them. So Riker would have to draw them out.

  He didn’t have to wait long. Less than two minutes later, the man with the dislocated shoulder began shouting loudly now that he’d worked his way free of the gag. With Luke’s diesel engine still running, there was no chance the men at the gate would hear it, but he hoped that the men in this truck would.

  “The hell?” one of the men asked as he opened the driver’s side door and stepped out.

  “It’s Riker!” the injured man shouted. “He’s here!”

  Riker waited until both men were out of the truck, then he moved in. Less concerned about silence now, he slammed his foot into the side of the first man’s knee. The man let out a shout of pain as he staggered, his leg giving out under him. Riker turned his attention to the other man, attacking with a flurry of jabs to the face, knocking the man back. An uppercut sent the man sprawling to the ground. Riker descended on him like a pouncing lion, rolling him onto his stomach, securing his hands and ankles.

  The other man was still on the ground, and he was pulling his pistol from its holster. Riker slammed a foot into the man’s wrist before he could extract his gun. The man cried out as his wrist snapped. A moment later, he too was bound.

  The urgency gone, Riker made his way back to the gate casually, taking the most direct path now. When he reached it, he saw the two guards were still working on getting the excavator off the trailer. Only Luke was looking in his direction, and his eyes lit up in surprise and delight at seeing his friend return so quickly. His hand went to his waistband, pulling out his pistol.

  “Hey guys, change of plans,” Luke said.

  The two men looked up from their work to see a pistol pointing at them, and Matthew Riker stalking toward them.

  “You’re going to stand very still, and my buddy Matt is going to tie you up.”

  The men were so surprised that they didn’t even put up a fight.

  A few minutes later, Luke and Riker exchanged a fist bump.

  “I can’t believe you actually did it,” Luke said. “You took out six guys by yourself in what? Six minutes?”

  Riker shrugged. “Give or take.”

  “That’s damn impressive, my friend.”

  “It’s what I do.” He paused. “Or what I did. I retired from that life.”

  Luke smiled. “Tell that to the guys bound and gagged on the ground.”

  “Turns out I’m not very good at retiring.”

  Luke looked at his friend for a long moment, and his smile faded. “You know, I used to wonder what happened to you. Where you were now. I hoped you had a wife and maybe a couple kids. A boring job somewhere. I hoped you’d managed to avoid a life of violence.”

  “I guess neither of us were able to pull that off.” There was a hint of sadness in Riker’s voice.

  “Well, I guess we’ll need that experience for what’s coming.” Luke let out a sigh. “You do realize that this is going to be the end of us, right? I mean, the battle that’s ahead… Our chances of surviving are incredibly thin. And even if we do survive, the cartel is not going to let us walk away. They’ll keep coming until we’re dead. Those guys are relentless.”

  Riker couldn’t argue with anything his friend had said. On the other hand, he had a bit of experience when it came to relentless organizations wanting him dead. “I wouldn’t count us out just yet. Our odds aren’t great, but I never was much of a math guy.”

  “That’s for damn sure,” Luke said with a chuckle. “I carried your ass through Algebra 2 junior year.”

  “No argument there.” Riker slapped his friend on the shoulder. “Come on, we have work to do. You have to get these guys over to the station and set everything up here.”

  “Me? What are you going to be doing?”

  Riker didn’t answer. He wasn’t ready to share absolutely everything with his old friend just yet. There was something he needed to do before the coming battle.

  36

  Riker sat in Luke’s truck outside a small house on the east side of Kingsport. It was late—too late for a casual visit to someone he barely knew—but he didn’t have the luxury of following etiquette tonight. There was a good chance he was going to die tomorrow. If he was going to do this, he needed to do it now.

  But first, he needed to make two phone calls. He fished his phone out of his pocket and tapped Megan’s number. She answered on the third ring.

  “I hope you're calling to tell me we’ve defeated the cartel and can all go home now.”

  “That’s still a work in progress,” he said. “How are things going there?”

  “Good. Chief Myers is freaking out a little, but I think he’ll be able to hold it together. Alvarez is barking orders at him now. I thought he was going to push back the first time she did it, but he actually seemed a little relieved.”

  That made sense to Riker. Sometimes when things felt as if they were spinning out of control, you just wanted someone to tell you what to do. That appeared to be where the police chief was at currently.

  “Listen, Megan, I need you to do something for me.”

  “Of course. What is it?”

  “Tomorrow morning, I need you to forget about all this and go to work.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Matt, we’ve been through this. I’m not going to sit back while my town is being—”

  “And I’m not saying you should,” Riker said, cutting her off. “You’ve already done more than I ever should have asked of you. But tomorrow’s going to be a fight against trained killers, not local hardasses. It’s going to be messy and bloody.”

  “Which is exactly why you need me.”

  “No. Your kids need you.” Riker paused, shifting the phone
to the other ear. “Look, this whole thing started because a high school teacher wanted to make a difference. I wouldn’t be the man I am today if not for Coach Kane, and I’m sure there are dozens of others who could say the same thing. Your kids need you. They just attended one funeral. Don’t make them go to another.”

  Megan sighed. “Damn it cuz, I hate it when you make sense. All right, I’ll go to work tomorrow morning. Though I'm not sure how you expect me to teach world history while I know you’re in the fight of your life.”

  “If anyone can do it, it’s you. I gotta go. We’ll talk soon.”

  He hung up, then stared at his phone. The call to Megan had been necessary, but this next one was just for him. Maybe he shouldn’t be spending his time on something like this while there was still so much work to be done. On the other hand, he thought he deserved a little something of his own before he sacrificed everything.

  He touched another phone number and waited while it rang.

  “So Matthew Riker does know how to use a telephone,” Jessica said.

  The sound of her voice brought an immediate smile to his face. “Indeed. I’ve also heard that modern telephones actually work both ways. You could even call me if you wanted to.”

  It had been a little less than a month since Riker had left California and seen Jessica for the last time. They’d spoken three times since then and exchanged a few texts. It always felt comfortable when they talked, but both of them seemed hesitant to do it too often, as if their new relationship were a fragile thing that might be crushed if either of them applied too much pressure.

  “How’s the bee-keeping game?”

  “Solid. I named one of the bees after you.”

  “I hope it was a queen.”

  “Of course it was. But I’m actually back in Iowa right now. My hometown.”

  “Really?” she asked. “Visiting family?”

  “Funeral. My old wrestling coach passed away.”

  “Oh Riker, I’m so sorry.”

  “Thanks.” He swallowed hard. “How about you? How’s the leg?”