Stand Your Ground

by William W. Johnstone

  He thought about what Raffir had said. It was troubling that the Americans had been able to fight back and kill some of his men. They should all have been bottled up in the maximum security wing. It was possible, Hamil supposed, that a few of them had managed to hide while his forces were making their sweep through the rest of the prison, but not likely.

  Troubling or not, the problem was irrelevant. Soon all the Americans would be dead, those unjustly imprisoned would be freed, and he would be a hero from one end of the Muslim world to the other.

  And this was just the beginning, Hamil vowed. Soon the Muslim world would have no end. It would encircle the globe, and rivers of blood would run in every country as he and his fellow warriors claimed the planet for Allah’s greater glory.

  “Doctor,” Raffir said, breaking into Hamil’s vision. “The device is ready.”

  “Then use it,” Hamil said.

  Stark still wore a watch. Many of his generation did, even though younger generations relied on their phones to tell them the time. Those phones did practically everything except tuck you in bed at night. Some of them probably had an app for that.

  When Stark looked at his watch and saw that the hour was getting on toward six o’clock, he thought about Kincaid and Cambridge and wondered where they were. Kincaid had said they would be back by six. Dawn, the deadline that Hamil had set, was less than an hour after that.

  It would be here before you knew it, he thought.

  Riley came into the guard station. She had been pacing worriedly for a while, ever since Stark had told her what Kincaid and Cambridge were doing.

  “They should have taken me with them,” she said. “I used to be a Marine.”

  Stark smiled.

  “Yeah, I know. You told me.”

  “Well, I could have helped,” she insisted.

  “I don’t doubt it. It wasn’t up to me, though.”

  “Evidently it wasn’t up to me, either,” Riley said. “I swear, if Kincaid went off and got himself killed—”

  “Hold on a minute,” Stark said. He had been watching the video monitors, and he had just spotted movement on one of them. He leaned forward for a better look. Riley came up to his shoulder to join him.

  “What is that?” she asked as they watched an ungainly object rolling along the corridor toward the rubble that blocked it. “It looks sort of like . . . a hotel serving cart. Like they use with room service.”

  “Nobody’s pushing it, though,” Stark said. “That’s some sort of remote-controlled robot.”

  He had a bad feeling about this.

  Suddenly, he told Riley, “Get everybody back along the cell block as far as you can, away from the doors.”

  “Crap, crap, crap,” she said under her breath as she started out. “That thing’s some sort of bomb.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking,” Stark said as he hurried to the sally port’s inner door. He started firing his rifle through the gap at the advancing robot.

  His shots didn’t do any good. The thing was heavily armored, he thought. But it couldn’t reach the outer door because the corridor was blocked. In fact, it had bumped up against the rubble now and stopped. It couldn’t come any closer.

  The top of the box-like object slid back, and something started to rise out of it. Stark recognized it as a rocket launcher. He fired several shots at the rocket, hoping to detonate it. But again the bullets just bounced off harmlessly.

  Stark leaped to the control panel and slapped the switches that closed the doors. As they started to grind shut, he offered up a silent prayer that the reinforced doors would be strong enough to withstand whatever was coming.

  The doors hadn’t quite closed all the way when the rocket launched, trailing smoke as it flew the fifty yards along the corridor. It wouldn’t have mattered if they had.

  The explosion blasted both doors to smithereens and threw John Howard Stark backward into blackness as if he were a rag doll.

  While Stark was shooting at the robot, trying futilely to stop it, Riley ran into the wing and started shouting.

  “Everybody wake up! Wake up! Get to the far end of the wing! Now! There’s a bomb! Run, damn it!”

  She paused and bent to grab Alexis Devereaux’s arm. She hauled the older woman to her feet and gave her a shove.

  “Move!”

  “What—what are you doing?” Alexis demanded. “How dare you—”

  “I’m trying to save your life, you stupid bitch,” Riley snapped. “Your friends are about to unleash hell on us.”

  J.J. Lockhart ran up and asked, “What is it, missy? What’s goin’ on—”

  She pushed him toward the far end of the wing, too, and told him, “Just go!”

  Everyone—guards and inmates alike—stampeded away from the entrance, yelling about a bomb. The terrorist prisoners in the cells started clamoring. There was nothing Riley could do about them, but she herded everybody else away from the sally port.

  Satisfied that panic was going to clear out this end of the wing, she turned around and started back. She didn’t see Stark anywhere, and if he hadn’t been able to stop what was bound to be a lethal robot, he needed to get out of there.

  Before she could reach the guard station, an explosion rocked the floor under her feet. A giant ball of fire bloomed at the entrance to the wing, and a wave of concussive force slammed into her, lifting her off her feet and throwing her backward.

  She slammed into the floor and blacked out, but when she began to regain her senses she could tell that only a few seconds had passed. Smoke billowed from the area where the guard station had been. It stung her eyes and nose and made her cough as she pushed herself up on an elbow.

  Everything was oddly silent. She realized the explosion had deafened her, and she could only hope that her hearing would come back.

  Of course, that might be a minor worry in the long run.

  She looked around and saw a crumpled shape lying a few feet to her right. She recognized the man as Stark and scrambled onto hands and knees to crawl over to him.

  As she did, she took stock of her own condition and realized that nothing seemed to be broken. Her body worked all right, even though it ached like it had been pummeled by giant fists.

  The blast must have blown Stark clear of the guard station, she thought. He was lucky it hadn’t incinerated him. He still might be dead, though. The bomb’s concussion might have broken his neck and pulped every bone in his body.

  Riley grabbed Stark’s shoulders and rolled him toward her. His eyebrows and mustache were singed, and blood oozed from several small cuts on his face. She didn’t see any major injuries, though, and when she searched for a pulse in his throat, she found one. He was alive, although she couldn’t have said whether he had any internal injuries.

  “Come on, Mr. Stark, we need to get out of here,” she said. She heard the words only vaguely as an echo inside her skull.

  Stark didn’t respond. His eyes remained closed. Riley glanced toward the wreckage of the guard station and the doors.

  Ruthless killers were going to be coming through that cloud of smoke any second now, she thought.

  A massive form suddenly loomed over her. She looked up and saw Billy Gardner reaching down for Stark.

  “Let me give you a hand with him, ma’am,” the former gangland bodyguard and enforcer said.

  Gardner’s voice was tinny and distant, but Riley heard it. That was one small sign of encouragement in the violent chaos. She scrambled to her feet as Gardner lifted Stark—who was a big man and no lightweight himself—and draped him over a shoulder.

  Angelo Carbona had followed Gardner. He urged, “Hurry up, Billy! Those terrorist guys gotta be on their way in.”

  Riley spotted a rifle and a pistol lying on the floor nearby. She grabbed the rifle and used her foot to send the pistol sliding toward the old mobster.

  “Mr. Carbona!” she called to him. “Get the gun!”

  She knew Kincaid had been opposed to the idea of arming the inmates
, but he wasn’t here right now and neither was Cambridge. Stark was unconscious.

  So Riley was going to do what she thought best.

  “Thanks, doll!” Carbona said as he reached down and picked up the pistol. He straightened, pointed it at Riley, and opened fire.

  She realized—luckily in time not to kill him—that he was shooting past her, not at her. She turned and saw several figures emerging from the smoke. They had scarves wrapped around the lower halves of their faces and carried rifles and machine guns. Riley started shooting at them as she backed away.

  She and Carbona dropped three of the attackers and made the others scatter. That gave Riley and Carbona the chance to run after Gardner, who loped along easily with Stark’s senseless form over his shoulder.

  Several correctional officers ran to meet them. They provided cover as Riley and the others retreated. As she hurried past an open door that led into a maintenance area, she saw Simon Winslow standing next to the hatch where Kincaid and Cambridge had left the wing a couple of hours earlier.

  “Simon, come on,” Riley called to him. “We’ve got to pull back. They’ve breached the doors!”

  “Mr. Stark told me to stay here,” Winslow objected. “I’m supposed to listen for a signal and unfasten the hatch when I hear it!”

  More gunfire filled the air as the guards battled with the terrorists. Winslow probably wouldn’t be able to hear anything, even if Kincaid and Cambridge returned and gave the signal.

  Maybe they were safer down there in the tunnels, Riley thought. With the bloodthirsty terrorists now pouring into the cell block, lying low might give them their best chance for survival.

  Riley found that she was surprisingly okay with that. She wanted Lucas Kincaid to come through this alive, even if she didn’t.

  “Come on, Simon,” she said again.

  He swallowed hard.

  “Do . . . do you think I should unfasten the hatch?”

  Riley shook her head and said, “Leave it dogged down.”

  She hoped Kincaid wouldn’t wind up hating her for that decision.

  Winslow joined her and Carbona. She hustled both of them along the cell block. At the far end, benches and tables had been piled up to form a makeshift barricade. It would give the defenders some cover for a little while, but it wouldn’t hold back the terrorists for long. They swarmed like vicious, mindless insects, willing to die for their twisted, hate-filled beliefs.

  With bullets whipping around and above their heads, Riley, Winslow, and Carbona made a run for that small measure of safety. Somebody on the other side of the barricade pulled a bench aside, and the three of them darted through that opening. Men shoved the bench back into place.

  As the shooting continued, Riley paused to catch her breath and look around. She saw Alexis Devereaux huddled in a corner, disheveled and red-faced from sobbing in terror. Travis Jessup stood near her, pale with fear but holding a rifle, Riley noted with surprise. Evidently, desperation had forced the newsman to find a little courage deep inside himself.

  John Howard Stark was conscious and on his feet, although he looked pretty shaky and Billy Gardner stood next to him with a hand on Stark’s arm to steady him.

  “Mr. Stark,” Riley said, “are you all right?”

  Stark tapped his left ear and said, “Can’t hear you very well, Riley. I was too close to that blast. But I reckon you asked if I was all right. I am, especially considering that I could’ve been blown to bits.”

  “Can you take over? I don’t know what to do now.”

  “Only one thing we can do,” Stark said. “Fight as long as there’s breath in our bodies.”

  CHAPTER 46

  “They’ve blown the doors in the sally port!” Kincaid said as the ground still trembled under their feet. “We’ve got to get back there!”

  Cambridge grabbed his arm to stop him.

  “Wait a minute,” the young guard said. “We can’t waste this chance, Lucas.”

  “Chance?” Kincaid repeated. “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “They’ll be throwing everything they’ve got at the entrance to the maximum security wing. We can come out behind them and catch them in a cross fire.”

  “Two men can’t catch five hundred guys in a cross fire!”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that. There’ll be so much racket, so many bullets flying around, we might be able to kill a lot of them before they even realize we’re there.”

  Even though Kincaid’s instincts made him want to rush back to where he had left his friends, he realized that what Cambridge said made sense. Effectively using the things you had on your side was often at least half of winning a battle. He said, “You can put us in the corridor behind the main bunch of terrorists?”

  “I can,” Cambridge stated.

  “Let’s go do it, then,” Kincaid said with a nod.

  Raffir argued that his leader should stay back where it was safe. Dr. Hamil meant more to the Sword of Islam than just another fighter to be martyred in their holy cause.

  Hamil appreciated that sentiment, but after everything that had happened, all the months of preparation, all the blood that had been spilled, there was no way he was going to miss out on the culmination of this glorious triumph.

  He wasn’t going to throw his life away recklessly, though. He wore a bulletproof vest and carried an AK-47. He thought he looked rather dashing—although Allah frowned on vanity and hubris, of course.

  With satisfaction, he looked at the damage that had been done by the remote-controlled rocket launcher and bomb. Beyond the piles of rubble and the gaping holes where concrete walls had been, a crescendo of gunfire continued as members of the Sword of Islam fought their way along the cell block toward the last bastion of defenders at the far end.

  “Another few minutes, Doctor,” Raffir said. “Another few minutes and it will be over. Our brothers will be free.”

  “Have we lost many men?” Hamil asked.

  Raffir shrugged and said, “Some. The Americans fight well . . . for infidels.”

  “A thousand Americans will die for every Muslim. This is only the beginning, Raffir. Only the beginning.”

  Raffir smiled and nodded. Then his head jerked a little and his eyes widened. A red-rimmed black hole had appeared in his temple. As his eyes glazed over in death, his knees folded up and dropped him to the debris-littered floor.

  Hamil had no idea where the shot that had killed Raffir had come from, but he leaped behind a pile of rubble anyway, taking cover as he looked around frantically. With the air so full of gunfire, there was no way to isolate and identify a particular shooter.

  But several men who stood nearby began to fall, blood welling from their wounds. Hamil remembered what Raffir had told him about someone killing some of their men earlier, before the final assault began.

  American snipers were loose in the prison, Hamil thought. Even though he would never have admitted it, the thought struck fear in him for an instant.

  Then he shoved it away. Allah would protect him.

  But just in case, maybe it would be a good idea to stay here behind this rubble . . .

  During a brief lull in the fighting, Riley Nichols said to Stark, “I don’t want them to take me alive.”

  “That’s probably a good idea,” Stark said with a nod.

  “I mean it. I’m saving one bullet for myself. Just like in the old Western movies. Unless I can count on you to . . .”

  Stark grimaced and said, “I’m liable to be pretty busy. But I wouldn’t go giving up just yet.”

  Riley looked around the makeshift fort. About half of the guards and some of the inmates were dead. Several of the defenders who were still alive had been wounded. A bullet had broken Simon Winslow’s arm. The hacker cradled it against him with his other arm. J.J. Lockhart’s corpse sprawled to one side, a couple of bullet holes in his chest. Carbona and Gardner were both sporting bloody creases.

  “They’re going to overrun us any minute now,” Riley sa
id.

  “More than likely, but that doesn’t mean we should stop fighting.”

  A faint smile curved Riley’s mouth as she said, “Remember the Alamo, is that it?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You Texans are a stubborn bunch.”

  “Yes, ma’am, we are,” Stark said, “and here they come again!”

  Colonel Atkinson left a few dozen men in Fuego to finish mopping up there. The rest of his force piled into whatever vehicles they could find and headed for Hell’s Gate.

  The sun was coming up behind them.

  Lee and Gibby were in a van with Atkinson and Sgt. Porter. The colonel had another cigar clenched between his teeth, holding it at a jaunty angle. Lee knew it was a pose, but he had to admit it looked good on Atkinson. And the colonel was one hell of a fighting man, that was for sure.

  The prison came into view. Smoke spiraled up from it in several places. Even from a distance, it looked like the battleground that it was.

  “We’ll hit ’em hard and fast, boys,” Atkinson said. “I don’t know where the folks still alive in there will have forted up, but we should be able to follow the gunfire.”

  “Are we gonna wind up in federal prison for this, Colonel?” Lee asked. “Assuming we live through it, that is.”

  “Well, I don’t know, Officer Blaisdell. If the feds come in and try to arrest us when this is all over, we may wind up with another fight on our hands. Are you ready for that?”

  Lee thought about Janey and the new life they were going to bring into the world, and he knew what a sorry state of affairs it would be if Bubba had to grow up in a country where up was down and right was wrong.

  “I’m ready for whatever comes, Colonel,” he said. “As long as we’ve got good men to lead the way.”