Stand Your Ground

by William W. Johnstone

  Over the past few minutes, Lee had heard shooting erupt in other parts of town and knew the main thrust of the attack was under way. The paratroopers were reaching the ground and engaging the terrorists. Something blew up, sending a pillar of flame into the sky several hundred yards away.

  It made sense that Hamil had sent the main body of his force out to Hell’s Gate to try to take the prison, leaving only enough men in Fuego to keep the town under control. He couldn’t have expected an airborne assault from the State of Texas. But that was what he was getting.

  The threat of the explosives planted under the bleachers remained, though. Lee and the men with him needed to get in there, kill the terrorists guarding the prisoners, and get all those innocent folks out of the stadium before something awful happened.

  Lee emptied his rifle again, switched out the magazines. He had just put the last full mag in the weapon, he reminded himself as he motioned for Gibby to follow him. He ran toward the field house, knowing there was a gate there leading into the stadium.

  Bullets sang through the air around them. Men yelling and chanting in their native language ran around firing wildly. They wanted to die and be martyred.

  Lee obliged as many of them as he could.

  Then he and Gibby were past the field house, past the ticket office, running along the open area underneath the stands. Lee looked up, saw the bundles of explosives attached here and there.

  If those suckers were to go off now, there wouldn’t be enough of him and Gibby left to bury, he thought.

  He spotted one of the terrorists running up a ramp that led to the seats. The man had an automatic weapon in his hands, and Lee didn’t doubt for a second that he was crazy enough to start mowing down the prisoners. Calling to Gibby, “Watch my back!” he went after the would-be mass murderer.

  Lee heard the machine gun chattering and people screaming before he reached the top of the ramp. As he emerged into the open, he saw the terrorist spraying bullets into the crowd as he shrieked out his hatred.

  Lee fired without taking the time to aim, but instinct guided his shots. The pair of slugs from his rifle ripped through the terrorist and drove him back against the railing that ran along the front of the stands. The man flipped up and over it, falling out of sight.

  Then Lee saw something that made the blood in his veins turn to ice. Farther along the walkway at the front of the bleachers, a man was down on both knees, leaning forward with his head pressed to the planks. He was facing toward Mecca, Lee realized, which meant he was praying. This sure wasn’t the time and place for that, Lee thought, unless the fella figured he was about to die . . .

  The man raised his head and lifted something in his right hand. Lee’s eyes widened as he saw a little red light blinking on the object.

  It was a freakin’ detonator!

  Lee didn’t stop to think. He brought the rifle to his shoulder, took the tiniest fraction of a second to aim, and squeezed the trigger. The rifle kicked against his shoulder as it went off.

  The bullet went in the back of the terrorist’s head, shattered his skull, bored through his brain, and destroyed his nose as it exploded out through a fist-sized hole in the middle of his face. His thumb had almost reached the button on top of the detonator, but his hand opened automatically as all his nerves spasmed in death. The little cylindrical object dropped from his fingers and rolled toward the edge of the walkway.

  A hand reached down to pluck the detonator from the planks. Colonel Thomas Atkinson gripped it tightly. He had reached the top of another ramp just in time to grab the detonator.

  The colonel nodded to Lee and grinned for a second, as if to say, job well done.

  Then he shouted, “Let’s get these people out of here!”

  All of Lee’s muscles seemed to turn to water as he thought about how close they had come to being blown sky-high. He had to lean against the railing to steady himself.

  Gibby appeared and asked, “Are you all right, Officer Blaisdell?”

  “Maybe,” Lee said. “Maybe.”

  He heard only scattered gunfire now. Governor Delgado’s special force had done its job. The Battle of Fuego—the Second Battle of Fuego, he corrected himself—appeared to be just about over.

  And this time the good guys had won.

  But most of the terrorists were out at Hell’s Gate, and they could still get what they wanted.

  Unless there was somebody there to stop them.

  CHAPTER 44

  “All right,” Stark said as he stood beside the hatch. “Down you go.”

  Kincaid and Cambridge were poised beside the opening, each armed with a rifle and two pistols. Stark didn’t care much for the idea of just the two of them going out there, but this sort of operation called for a small, fast-moving force. Using Cambridge’s knowledge of the labyrinthine network of tunnels, they could pop out, do some damage to the terrorists, and disappear again before any of the enemy knew what had happened.

  That was the plan, anyway.

  In the meantime, Stark would be in charge of the defense here in the maximum security wing. He had been involved in the defense of the Alamo from the Mexican army a few years earlier, so trying to hold off an overwhelming force was nothing new to him.

  “It’s four a.m. now,” Kincaid said. “We’ll be back by six . . . if we’re coming back.”

  “All right, but don’t blame me if you’re later than that and I don’t give up hope,” Stark said. “Things like this have a way of not going exactly according to plan.”

  Kincaid laughed. “That’s the truth,” he said. “Good luck, John Howard.”

  “Same to you boys,” Stark said.

  Kincaid and Cambridge climbed down through the hatch and disappeared into the tunnel. Stark closed the hatch behind them and fastened it securely. They had worked out a simple, primitive, but effective signal that could be given by tapping on the underside of the hatch. If whoever was guarding the hatch on this side didn’t hear that signal, it would stay closed to prevent the terrorists from following Kincaid and Cambridge back here and getting into the wing that way.

  When the two commandos were gone, Stark stepped out of the maintenance area and motioned for Simon Winslow to come over.

  “Do you know the opening of ‘Louie, Louie’?” Stark asked the computer hacker.

  Winslow frowned and asked, “What? I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about, Mr. Stark.”

  Stark tried not to sigh at how culturally deprived this kid was. He knew everything there was to know about computers but didn’t know how the most iconic garage rock song of all time began.

  Stark used his knuckles to rap out the rhythm on the wall. He did that several times and asked Winslow, “You got that now? It’s important.”

  “I got it,” Winslow said, and at Stark’s insistence he rapped out the tune himself. Then he asked, “Now, what am I supposed to do about it?”

  Stark led him to the hatch and pointed at it. Winslow’s eyes got big with surprise.

  “You’re going to stand right here,” Stark told him, “and if you hear somebody tap that tune on the other side of the hatch, you come and get me right away. And there’s no need for you to go and tell anybody about this.”

  “Is this going to help us get out of here alive?”

  “Maybe,” Stark said. That was still a long shot, but it wouldn’t hurt anything to spread a little hope around.

  “Then I’ll do exactly what you say, Mr. Stark. You can count on me.”

  Stark clapped a hand on his shoulder and said, “I hoped you’d feel that way, Simon.”

  He left Winslow guarding the hatch and went back out into the main part of the wing. Things had finally settled down somewhat as more of the prisoners went to sleep, although a few arguments were still going on between the regular inmates and the terrorists. The correctional officers who had holed up in here were taking turns sleeping, too.

  Alexis Devereaux and Travis Jessup were stretched out on pallets made from b
lankets spread on the floor. With drool leaking from their open mouths, neither of them looked ready for prime time anymore. Alexis looked especially haggard, and Stark wondered if that was from not only fear and the physical toll of their ordeal but also because she’d been disillusioned in her admiration for the Islamic extremists.

  Doubtful, Stark decided. People like Alexis who had made a religion out of their liberal politics couldn’t allow anything to shake their faith, or else the whole underpinning of their existence would fall out from under them.

  Riley Nichols came out of the restroom used by the correctional officers. She nodded to Stark in the dim light and said, “Everything’s quiet, isn’t it?”

  “For now,” Stark said. “It’s a while yet until dawn, though.”

  “Hamil’s deadline.”

  “Yep.”

  “I’m a little surprised the President hasn’t issued an executive order telling you to release those terrorists. It seems like something he’d do. Democrats all love executive orders—when they’re in the White House.”

  “And that’s a permanent state of affairs now, most folks believe,” Stark said.

  “Probably. As long as things are the way they are now.” Riley smiled. “Things have a way of changing when people who used to be free get beaten down long enough, though.”

  “Until the last ten or fifteen years, I’d have said you were right. Now . . .” Stark shook his head. “I just don’t know anymore. It may be that the country’s too broken to mend itself.”

  “You’re not saying we should give up hope?”

  “Never,” Stark said. “As long as good folks are drawing breath, there’s still hope.”

  “Even if they’re outnumbered?”

  “Even if they’re outnumbered,” Stark said.

  He had a feeling the world might be seeing that for itself before too much longer . . . even if he wasn’t around to witness it.

  “Where’s Lucas?” Riley asked.

  Stark hesitated. Kincaid hadn’t told her what he and Cambridge were going to do, even though Stark had hinted that maybe he should. Kincaid had said there was no real need for her to know. That was true from a strategic standpoint. Stark wasn’t sure it was from an emotional one, though.

  “He’s around, I suppose,” he said.

  Riley’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. She had good instincts, Stark thought.

  “He’s up to something, isn’t he?” she said. “But what in the world could he do? He’s trapped in here like the rest of us.”

  The hell with it, Stark told himself. It couldn’t hurt anything to tell her about it now. Kincaid would either make it back . . .

  Or he wouldn’t.

  Compared to some of the places he had been in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, these tunnels weren’t too bad, Kincaid thought. The ceiling was high enough he didn’t have to stoop, the concrete floor wasn’t covered in sewage, and low-wattage bulbs mounted in wire cages every so often provided light.

  And nobody down here was trying to kill him . . . yet.

  “Where do you want to go first?” Cambridge asked.

  “Where does the tunnel to Administration come out?”

  “In Warden Baldwin’s office.”

  “Good a place as any to start, I guess,” Kincaid said. “There’s a chance nobody will be in there. None of the security systems are run from there, so there’s no real reason for the terrorists to leave somebody on guard.”

  “I agree. It’s this way.”

  Cambridge seemed to know where he was going. After they had trotted through the tunnels for a few minutes, making several turns seemingly at random, Kincaid asked, “Have you actually been down here exploring before, Mitch?”

  “Well . . . no,” Cambridge admitted. “But I’ve studied the plans extensively.”

  “What if something got built a little different from the plans?”

  “I can’t think of any reason why it would.” Cambridge shrugged. “But if we run into that, I guess we’ll just have to figure it out.”

  That was no more of a risk than any of the others they were running, Kincaid thought.

  A short time later they came to steel ladder rungs set into the wall. Kincaid looked up a short, circular shaft and saw a hatch similar to the one in the maximum security wing.

  “What if it’s locked on the other side?” he asked.

  “It shouldn’t be,” Cambridge said. “All the hatches can be dogged down from the top side, but the plan was to leave them where they could be accessed from underneath. Otherwise they wouldn’t serve the purpose they were intended for.”

  “Again with the plan.”

  Cambridge shrugged and said, “Let’s go find out.”

  He started to grab hold of a rung, but Kincaid said, “I’ll go first.”

  “Why?”

  “Just in case there’s trouble waiting for us up there.”

  “I can handle trouble. I’ve already fought with those terrorists.”

  “I’ve tangled with a lot more of their cousins,” Kincaid said.

  “Overseas, you mean.”

  Kincaid just grunted. He had already spilled his guts to Stark, and he still didn’t know what had possessed him to do that. He wasn’t going to tell his life story to Cambridge, too. For one thing, there wasn’t time.

  “I’ll go first,” he said, his tone not allowing for any argument.

  Cambridge grunted and said, “Up you go, then, if you feel that strongly about it.”

  Kincaid went.

  The hatch cover wasn’t fastened down. He spun the wheel and raised it without any trouble. The two men emerged in a closet that opened onto a darkened office. A little light penetrated the room because the door into the outer office and the door beyond that into one of the main corridors were both open.

  Kincaid’s jaw tightened as he looked around in the dim glow and saw how thoroughly the place had been trashed. The terrorists had had fun breaking and ripping and even pissing and shitting on things, judging by the stench that filled the room. They were animals, Kincaid thought, then corrected himself because that comparison wasn’t fair to the animals.

  Voices from somewhere outside the office made him stiffen.

  He motioned to Cambridge and then ghosted across the room toward the door. They eased through the outer office and then paused in that doorway.

  Two of the terrorists were coming along the hall, talking to each other in Saudi. Kincaid understood enough of the language to know they were talking about the American girl who had been raped to death the day before. When they laughed, it was all Kincaid could do not to step out into the corridor and hose them both down with the semiautomatic rifle in his hands.

  That would make a lot of racket, though, and he wanted to avoid that as long as possible. Instead, he and Cambridge hung back in the shadows until the two men passed the door.

  Then Kincaid stepped out, caught one of the guys from behind with the rifle across his windpipe, planted a knee in the small of his back, and broke his neck with a sharp tug and push.

  A few feet away, Cambridge used his rifle to cave in the other terrorist’s skull.

  They dragged the bodies into the office. It might be a while before anybody came looking for the dead men.

  It was a start, Kincaid thought.

  For the next hour and a half, he and Cambridge moved through the sprawling prison like phantoms. They waited for good chances to strike, killing terrorists one, two, or three at a time. Once they opened fire on a group of six men, cutting them down before they knew they were in danger. By the time any of the other terrorists responded to the sound of shots, Kincaid and Cambridge were back down in the tunnels.

  Kincaid could just imagine how the rumors were starting to fly up there. Men were dying, and no one would know how the Americans were managing to kill them. Some of the terrorists were probably starting to get pretty spooked by now.

  Kincaid wasn’t sure if this would do any good in the long run, but it sure felt good t
o deliver swift, irrevocable justice to those scum. He had hoped they would find Phillip Hamil somewhere in the prison. If they were able to capture the Sword of Islam’s leader, that would give them a bargaining chip they might be able to use. So far, though, they hadn’t been that lucky.

  “It’s not long until six o’clock,” Cambridge said. “We should probably start back.”

  “Yeah,” Kincaid said. “Wouldn’t want to miss Hamil’s deadline at dawn.”

  They had only gone part of the way, though, when a massive explosion shook the entire prison, even down here in these secret tunnels.

  CHAPTER 45

  Men ran to meet Hamil as he brought his car to a screeching, skidding halt inside the prison compound. The guards outside the prison had let him through since they recognized his vehicle.

  “Where is Raffir?” he snapped as he got out of the car.

  “I’ve sent someone to get him,” one of the men replied.

  “Never mind. Take me to him.”

  Hamil stalked into the prison’s main building, where Raffir met him in the lobby, hurrying and looking sleepy. It had been a long night.

  “We saw an explosion in town,” Raffir said. “What happened ? Did the Americans—”

  “Never mind,” Hamil interrupted him. “I want us to break into the maximum security wing. Now.”

  “Doctor, you don’t know what’s been going on out here. Somehow—I, I don’t understand it—but somehow the Americans have been able to kill some of our men—”

  “Listen to me,” Hamil said. “I. Don’t. Care. Get into that wing and kill them all.”

  Hesitantly, Raffir said, “If we use explosives powerful enough to breach the sally port, we’ll be risking injury to some of our imprisoned brethren.”

  “There is no gain in life without risk. If some of them are injured or even killed, the rest will be freed. Those who die will be holy martyrs.”

  “Of course, Doctor. I’ll give the orders.”

  “See that you do,” Hamil said.

  Raffir rushed off. Hamil paused and rubbed his temples. He had thought that he slept restfully, but now weariness had settled in on him. This had gone on too long. The best, most effective strikes were those that were over quickly, leaving death and devastation in their wake.