Stand Your Ground

by William W. Johnstone

  They reached the supermarket without incident. Gibby and Spence stopped beside the loading dock at the back of the big building. As everyone got out of the vehicles, they could hear the sounds of the battle going on at the other end of town.

  “Weren’t the others supposed to cut and run so the ragheads would chase them?” Spence asked. “That sounds like they’re still fighting down there.”

  “Yeah, but we can’t worry about that now,” Lee said. “Let’s get to the police station.”

  The station was a couple of blocks away. Lee led his men along a side street so they could come up behind it. As they trotted along the empty street, he saw the bodies of several dogs lying here and there. Fresh anger welled up inside him at the sight. He knew the dogs must have rushed out to protect their owners and their homes as the invaders made their sweep through town. Those monsters didn’t hesitate to kill innocent people, so gunning down some loyal dogs would have meant less than nothing to them.

  Lee hoped the Devil had a special place in Hell lined up for those bastards.

  Then the rear parking lot of the police station came into sight. Lee knew the front of the building had been blasted apart in the earlier attack, but the back looked deceptively normal. It was empty at the moment. The police cars that were usually kept there were gone.

  Lee’s heart pounded heavily as he paused to look at the building. He couldn’t seem to get his breath. He swallowed hard and said quietly to the others, “All right, spread out a little as we go across the parking lot. Raymond, you stay behind us, you hear?”

  “I can fight,” Raymond said.

  “I know you can, but I need you to work the radio once we get in there, okay?”

  “Okay,” Raymond said. “But if you need me to fight, you just tell me.”

  “I reckon you’ll know, buddy,” Lee muttered.

  He held the rifle at a slant across his chest and started across the parking lot, keeping his eyes on the building as he ran. The shoes and boots of the others slapped on the concrete as they joined him.

  They were still fifteen yards from the back door when armed men boiled around both rear corners of the building and opened fire, catching Lee and his companions between the two forces.

  This was a trap, Lee thought in wild despair, and they had waltzed right into it!

  CHAPTER 37

  Stark leaned forward to look at the monitor where Kincaid was pointing. He saw a man kneeling at the corridor’s far corner, holding something.

  Stark’s guts went cold when he recognized the object as a rocket launcher.

  The terrorists were about to try blasting their way in.

  But the man seemed to be having some sort of trouble with the weapon. Maybe it was malfunctioning.

  Whatever the reason, it gave the defenders a very narrow window to fight back.

  “Open the doors!” Stark told Kincaid.

  “But—”

  Kincaid stopped short, evidently realizing what Stark had in mind, and pushed buttons on the console. The inner and outer doors of the sally port began to roll to the side.

  “John Howard, if he fires that thing—”

  Stark didn’t hear the rest of Kincaid’s warning. He didn’t have to. He knew what the former Army Ranger was getting at. Stark was putting himself in close proximity to a potential explosion as he ran to the sally port’s inner door, taking his rifle with him.

  “That’s enough!” he called to Kincaid.

  The doors stopped opening. The gap was only a couple of inches wide.

  This ought to be Kincaid making the shot, Stark thought as he brought the rifle to his shoulder. Kincaid was the marksman, the sniper.

  But Stark had made some difficult shots himself in his lifetime. He aimed through the tiny openings in both doors and set his sights on the terrorist with the grenade launcher, who seemed to have gotten whatever the problem was squared away. The man lifted the weapon . . .

  Stark fired.

  One round, sizzling through the narrow gaps, along the corridor, and into the terrorist’s forehead an inch above his right eye. As his skull exploded from the bullet’s impact, he went over backward and his finger jerked and fired the grenade.

  It went into the ceiling above him and exploded.

  “Close the doors!” Stark yelled at Kincaid over the blast. He heard debris slamming against the outer door and felt the floor shake under his feet.

  The ceiling caved in at the other end of the corridor. A huge cloud of dust and smoke billowed up, filling the corridor and obscuring the damage from the explosion. It rolled down the hallway toward the sally port but was blocked by the doors, which thumped shut just as it got there.

  As Stark stepped back into the command center, Kincaid said, “That was one hell of a shot!”

  “One hell of a lucky shot,” Stark said.

  “I don’t know about that. It looked like you knew what you were doing.”

  “Well, the important thing is, they’ve blasted their way through that outer door. And the damage that grenade did pretty much blocked the corridor for now.”

  “They’ll be able to dig their way through it pretty quick,” Stark said.

  “Maybe.” Kincaid picked up his rifle, which he had leaned against the console. “But not if we make it difficult for them.”

  Stark nodded. He knew what Kincaid meant, and it was a good idea. The longer they could hold off the terrorists, the better chance there was that help would arrive.

  Stark just wished he could believe wholeheartedly that the government really did want to help them.

  But he had seen for himself how the authorities had turned their backs on him when the drug cartels attacked his ranch.

  He had been there inside those ancient, hallowed walls when the government sided with the Mexican army against the modern-day defenders of the Alamo.

  He’d had to fight the law enforcement and political establishments almost every step of the way as he tried to protect his new home down in Shady Hills from being overrun by ruthless, drug-smuggling killers.

  If the events of the past decade had taught him anything, it was that the Powers That Be in this country were more likely to side with the enemies of the people. Good, honest, hardworking Americans had been abandoned in favor of the electoral, urban-dwelling majority that wanted to be coddled, given free stuff, and told what to do. And most of the time when those traditional Americans tried to protect themselves, the government cracked down on them.

  If by some miracle he and Kincaid and the others trapped here in Hell’s Gate survived this terrorist attack, they might well find themselves facing legal charges for fighting back.

  That was how insane things had become in this country under liberal Democrat rule.

  Now that the smoke and dust had settled in the corridor, Stark and Kincaid could see the pile of debris blocking the far end of the passageway. Kincaid pushed the buttons to open the sally port doors again. When they had slid back about three inches, he stopped them.

  Then he took his rifle and went to the inner door.

  “I’ll take the first shift, John Howard,” he told Stark. “But I may have to call on you later.”

  “I’ll be here,” Stark said. “It’s not like there’s anywhere else I can go.”

  Mitch Cambridge had come up behind them in time to hear Stark’s comment. He said, “Actually, Mr. Stark, that may not be true.”

  Stark and Kincaid both turned to look at the young guard in amazement. Kincaid asked, “Mitch, are you saying ... ?”

  “Yes, I am,” Cambridge replied with a nod. “There’s a way out of here.”

  Phillip Hamil had heard the explosion from deeper in the prison and felt a thrill go through him. That sound meant his men had blasted through the doors into the maximum security wing, and soon his imprisoned brothers would be free. Hamil strode in that direction, wanting to be there when the liberation took place.

  Raffir met Hamil before he could get there. The second-in-command trotted al
ong a hallway with a worried look on his narrow face.

  “Raffir!” Hamil said sharply. “Are not our men on the verge of triumph?”

  Raffir stopped and shook his head with obvious reluctance.

  “I had a man about to blow down the outer door with an RPG,” he said, “but one of the Americans killed him and caused the grenade to detonate so that the explosion blocked the approach to the maximum security wing.”

  Fury filled Hamil as he digested this unwelcome news. It was getting late in the afternoon. They should have breached the sally port by now and be busy killing the infidels for the greater glory of Allah and the Prophet.

  “Then clear away the debris and try again,” he snapped at Raffir. “We have more grenades. We have more men.”

  That was true. There were always believers willing to martyr themselves. That was why Islam would always emerge victorious in the end. The infidels cared about life on this earth. Hamil’s men cared only about the glories that awaited them in Heaven.

  Raffir nodded and said, “That was my first thought as well, Doctor. I sent men to move the collapsed ceiling. But . . .”

  “Well, what is it? Spit it out, man.”

  “An American marksman killed them all,” Raffir said. “They weren’t even able to retrieve the body of the first man we sent, the one with the RPG.”

  The fury that filled Hamil turned cold. He said, “So the bodies of our brothers are simply lying there in the open, where the infidels can gloat over them?”

  “I tried sending more men, but they were shot down as well. So I came to find you and see what you wanted to do next.”

  “What do I want to do next?” Hamil took a deep breath and roared, “I want to destroy the infidels!”

  He struggled to get control of himself. Raging at Raffir wouldn’t accomplish anything.

  After a moment, in a calmer voice, Hamil said, “I may have something to use against the Americans. Two prisoners from town. When I heard about them, I had them brought out from Fuego. First, though, I have to establish contact with them.”

  “Many of the guards carried walkie-talkies,” Raffir suggested. “Some of them in the maximum security wing should still have them. And we’ve gathered up plenty from dead bodies. We can find the right channel to contact the infidels.”

  Hamil nodded. This might work out after all.

  “Bring me one of the walkie-talkies,” he said. “And have the American boy and girl brought to me as well.”

  Andy had trouble believing that he and Jill were still alive. They should have died back there in the hospital cafeteria with all the other patients and visitors.

  The terrorists had questioned the hospital staff before they opened fire on the huddled, terrified prisoners, just to make sure there was no one among them they could make use of somehow.

  When they found out that he was the son of a guard captain from the prison, he had been pulled aside from the others. He had struggled to hang on to Jill, and the guy in charge of the killers had shrugged and said to bring her along, too.

  As Andy walked slowly out of the cafeteria on his crutches, with Jill stumbling along beside him and gunmen all around them, he’d heard the shooting start behind them. He heard the screams cut short and felt tears roll down his face. He knew people were dying back there, people who had gone to church with him and watched him play ball and led simple, honest lives . . .

  Until today when everything had been ripped cruelly away from them.

  Guilt had filled Andy as well. He was thankful, as well as amazed, that he and Jill were still alive, but a part of him felt like they should have died back there with the others. It wasn’t fair that a whim of fate had saved them, at least temporarily.

  They had been taken out of the hospital and put in the back of a van. A couple of men with automatic weapons guarded them, but to be honest, they didn’t need much guarding. With a broken leg, Andy couldn’t put up a real fight, and he couldn’t imagine Jill wrestling a gun away from one of those murderers and opening fire with it. That just wasn’t gonna happen.

  Time had dragged by. The back of the van grew uncomfortably warm in the sunny afternoon. Andy wasn’t going to complain, though. Not when he was alive and had no real right to be.

  Every now and then he heard an explosion or a burst of gunfire. The terrorists seemed to have taken over the town for the most part, but obviously there were still pockets of resistance.

  Finally, past the middle of the afternoon, another man came up and talked to their captors in a rapid, guttural language that Andy didn’t have a hope of understanding. Then the man had gotten behind the wheel, started the engine, and driven off with Andy, Jill, and the guards in the back.

  From the glimpses that Andy caught through the van’s windows, he soon figured out that they were headed for the prison.

  “What are they going to do with us, Andy?” Jill asked in a small, frightened voice as she pressed herself against his side.

  “I don’t know. Maybe . . . maybe try to trade us for something they want. They know my dad works at the prison.”

  “I think they’re going to kill us.”

  “If they were gonna do that, they’d have done it already,” he said, trying to sound confident.

  He wasn’t, though. He didn’t know if he and Jill were going to survive for the next five minutes, let alone until this ordeal was over.

  It didn’t take long to reach the prison. The van drove in, bumping over something several times along the way. Andy didn’t know what those bumps were. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know.

  The van came to a stop, and a moment later the rear doors swung open. The two guards hopped out and swung around to cover the prisoners with their automatic weapons, while more men reached in and grabbed hold of Jill’s blue jean–clad legs. She screamed and tried to kick as they hauled her out of the van.

  A man holding a pistol used the gun to gesture at Andy and ordered in a harshly accented voice, “Get out now.”

  “I’ll move as fast as I can, okay?” Andy said. He nodded toward the cast on his leg. “I’m gonna be a little slow, though.”

  “Come,” the man growled.

  Awkwardly, Andy scooted over to the rear door and swung his legs out. He wished he was wearing something besides the hospital gown and his boxers. This was as humiliating as it could be.

  Once he was out of the van and had the crutches tucked securely under his arms, he was marched toward the prison through something he had never seen before: a battlefield. Bodies and, well, pieces of bodies lay scattered on the ground. Shell holes gaped in the pavement. Some of the outbuildings were just rubble. The front of the facility’s main building showed heavy damage as well. In Andy’s online history textbook, he had seen images of destruction from World War II, and that was what Hell’s Gate looked like today.

  Jill said, “Andy, your dad . . .”

  “I know,” Andy said, his voice bleak. He had no way of knowing right now whether his father was dead or alive, but the chances of Bert Frazier having survived this battle had to be pretty small. Andy knew his dad would have been right in the middle of the fighting, trying to do his job.

  Jill started to sob from fear and horror. Andy couldn’t say or do anything to comfort her. They were both powerless right now.

  They were taken into what had been an anteroom off the prison’s main lobby and allowed to sit down. They waited there, under armed guard, listening to the faint sounds of shooting going on elsewhere in the prison.

  At last a tall, lean man came in and said to the guards in English, “The doctor wishes to see these two.”

  Andy had no idea who “the doctor” was. Under normal circumstances that designation might be comforting, but these were anything but normal circumstances.

  Somehow, knowing that “the doctor” wanted to see him and Jill sent a chill through him.

  That feeling didn’t go away as they were taken through the prison, Andy moving slowly on his crutches, until they were brought i
nto an office where a well-dressed, darkly handsome man stood in front of a desk.

  This was Warden Baldwin’s office, Andy recalled. He had been here before with his dad.

  The man waiting for them certainly wasn’t George Baldwin, though. He smiled at them and said, “Mr. Frazier, Miss Hamilton, my name is Dr. Phillip Hamil. I am very pleased to meet you. You two young people are going to help me and my friends achieve our goals and bring glory to the name of Allah.”

  All Andy had to do was look at the cold, reptilian hatred in the man’s eyes to know that he and Jill had just had a death sentence pronounced on them.

  CHAPTER 38

  With the parking lot behind the police station in Fuego being empty, there was no place to take cover as the jaws of the trap started to close on Lee Blaisdell and his companions. He and Flannery, along with Spence and Gibby, opened fire because that was all they could do.

  The other Ranger didn’t have a chance to do even that much. He grunted and went down, drilled through the neck. Blood fountained from the wound.

  That was the fate that awaited the rest of them—but suddenly a pickup roared around the corner of the building and plowed through one group of terrorists, crushing some of them beneath its wheels and sending others flying through the air from the devastating impact.

  The driver and the other man in the cab had more than just running down the killers in mind. They fired pistols from both windows into the other group of terrorists, who scattered to avoid being run over.

  That gave Lee and his companions time enough to aim their weapons and cut them down one by one. In less than half a minute, approximately two dozen terrorists lay dead or dying on the parking lot’s concrete pavement, and the pickup containing the unexpected rescuers skidded to a halt.

  The passenger door popped open. A tall, lean man with graying fair hair and a close-cropped beard stepped out. Sunglasses covered his eyes. He wore camo fatigues and combat boots and was unquestionably American.

  “Looks like we got here just in time to give you boys a hand,” he said in a Texas drawl. He jerked his head toward the pickup bed and went on, “Hop in. We need to get out of here while we’ve got the chance.”