Rifle fire crackled from beneath the trucks. Bullets pinged the empty metal silos. Alicia fired grenades, hitting the road twice, then a truck. Karla picked off two men shooting from a ditch. Alicia got the knack of the rifle mounted launcher, and in a high arc, landed three grenades beyond the trucks.
The smoky trail of a rocket streaked at the silo. Karla leaped to the metal roofed barn as the rocket hit low on the first silo and blew the top off.
“Time to go!” Karla pointed to the escape ladder hung from the roof. Alicia slid to it and started down. A Humvee tried to squeeze from its place in line. Karla shot the driver. She fired into the engines of the vehicles, then slid down the slick roof to the ladder.
A rocket slammed into the second silo spewing twisted metal and collapsing it onto the first, toppling both. Alicia gunned the engine of the Gator as Karla jumped aboard. Tires spun. They tore south. Behind them, the north side of the barn exploded.
They circled west, stopping behind a slight rise eleven hundred meters from the trucks. Karla set up the TAC 50. At that distance, Alicia could only watch. Men had returned to the road, assembling two mortars. Karla shot a man holding a shell. Then the man behind the weapon. The third man ran, and she focused elsewhere. A gunner opened fire from a Humvee machine gun and the vehicle started toward them. She shot the gunner, then the driver, then the engine.
A mortar round shook the ground three hundred feet short. A second one only a hundred. Karla aimed at the tube and hit the shell as a man dropped it in. The men exploded. Others fired rifles from three quarters of a mile. Bullets zipped grass well short. A few thudded dirt much closer. Karla ignored them and worked methodically. She hit a man in the ditch, another trying to retrieve a mortar barrel. Then she picked off two more behind the trucks. She shot the Humvees and the truck cabs, though she thought they were empty. East of the trucks, she caught glimpses of men scrabbling in the ditch. She fired at the trailing man to hurry them along. Four shots later, a mile away, she hit him.
The firing stopped, but explosions sounded from the farm: Jeff hadn’t silenced the mortars on the north. Karla took aim at the remaining mortar tubes and rendered them useless.
“I’m going to help Jeff.”
“Alicia was petrified. “You’re not leaving me here?”
“It’d probably be safer. Come on.”
They drove north through rough fields and grassland. They stopped for a distant view of what remained behind the trucks and saw no one moving.
“Hey, clear,” Karla said into the handheld.
She heard only dead air in response.
Chapter 96
Mortar shells exploded north of the house, falling short but closing in. Between the rounds, scattered rifle fire popped from Jeff’s and Glenn’s so far ineffective engagement. To the south, Karla’s .50 mixed with automatic M16s and several heavy percussions. There’d been no incoming from that direction.
Ray made ready in a hastily fashioned machine gun nest six hundred meters northeast of the buildings. He had rejected Karla’s plan because it left him hunkered in the house under fire with no ability to return it. Karla was right that one of them was needed should the group survive the expected mortar assault. She didn’t have the temperament to wait it out. He didn’t believe a battle could be won by troops hiding in a tunnel.
Arguing with Karla was pointless. He gave instructions to Brittany, Lamar, and Rainy, then left with Blake and the heavy machine gun. Blake was a gamble. But Ray wanted him where he could see him.
The deck on the old house went up in splinters. Then a hunk of the kitchen wall blew out into the yard. Ray spoke into the handheld.
“Everyone downstairs.” The top levels of the new structures were no longer tenable.
The house took a second and third hit, several more landing very close. Ray stared from his blind, waiting for a target. The concrete firing block atop the first addition vanished in a thunderous burst that visibly shook the building. Two rocket trails streaked to the old house. Half the roof collapsed and the walls seemed more holes than structure.
Ray spotted the rocketeers too late, in Blake’s zone. He shouldered the boy from his post, and using the Remington, shot two men. He held off with the machine gun, knowing it would bring mortar shells. He’d save that surprise for higher value targets.
More hits to the gutted house. The roof and second floor gave way. The shelling continued onto the remnants of the first floor—going after survivors in the cellar, Ray expected. Two explosions battered the first addition. “Get ready,” he called to Blake. “They’ll be here in minutes.”
Chapter 97
Karla looped west, the thundering booms closer. She and Alicia climbed a barn roof. Mortars whooshed. Rockets flared. Her house exploded. A Humvee sat at the north barricade, the rest of the convoy just beyond the north gate. They’d forced it open, but the men on the north didn’t have a bulldozer and the barricade held.
Two men crouched on a house roof half a mile away. Spotters. She lined up the .50 on the roof ridge and dropped the man with binoculars. The second man spun south and never saw her as he toppled from the building.
“Anyone?”
“Two. Eight hundred meters, south of the barn,” Alicia responded.
Karla twisted, found them in the scope. She killed one man as he prepared to fire a rocket, a second as he scanned to find her. A man stood on the road beside the lead Humvee, watching the attack with field glasses.
“How far to the lead vehicle?”
“Thirteen hundred.”
The man spoke into a handheld, turned toward the dead spotters, then to the farm. The bullet struck him low in the back. He dropped to the gravel; any body strike with the .50 was fatal.
* * *
Karla drove north, swinging wide past two farms. She didn’t trust the buildings. No time to clear them. She stopped on Burnett Station Road and sighted from the hood of their vehicle.
“One thousand,” Alicia called out.
A man looked their way and raised a rifle. Another dropped a shell in a mortar. The first man fell with his mouth open. Several bullets struck the road. One deflected into the Gator.
“Same distance. Ten meters right,” Alicia said
Karla shot the man. The last of the team dropped another mortar round in the tube and hit the ground. Karla had no angle. She puffed dirt a few inches from his head. The man scrambled for cover. Her next shot caught his leg.
Bullets punched their vehicle. Karla slid into the seat and roared across the road, a field, another road, now behind their line. A rocket streaked toward them and burst in the dirt fifty feet short. She veered sharply away and struck an ancient furrow. The Gator hung on two wheels for awkward seconds, then went over.
Chapter 98
Mortar rounds pummeled the addition, fewer but on target. “Number two, now!” Ray shouted into the handheld, hoping anyone was alive to listen. Two more explosions. Then it stopped.
A frenetic burst of small arms fire to the north. “Hang in there, Jeff,” Ray muttered. The exchange lasted under a minute and was followed by multiple heavy weapons. Ray swore he heard a .50 just before it all went quiet. Jeff had no defense against a weapon like that.
Diesel engines grew louder. A Humvee and three trucks rolled up behind the lead Humvee at the barricade.
“Time to go to work,” Ray said. “They’ve got a sniper, somewhere. Watch the belt and keep your head down.”
Ray lined up on the vehicles, four hundred meters out, and opened up as rifle toting men scrambled from the trucks. The men fell like human bowling pins. Ray raked the Humvees as they tried to escape, firing until there was no one in sight or any vehicle moving.
“Holy shit,” Blake said. “You tore them to pieces.”
“Stay down. It’s not over.”
As if as on cue, a bullet thudded into the wall of their earthworks, inches from Ray.
“Somebody can shoot. We’ll have to fi
nd him, if we want to get out of here.”
Chapter 99
The Gator rested upside down on the roll bar and hood, Karla and Alicia underneath. Two men ran toward them, spraying the air with automatic weapons like in a bad movie. Bullets hit the ground, the Gator, and some missed wildly. Alicia on her belly returned fire with the M16. Karla scrambled to set up the TAC 50 to the left of the overturned vehicle.
One man went down changing his clip. Karla took out the second as his bullets tore the ground to her right. Well beyond the dead, a man knelt at a mortar. Karla lined up the shot, a guess at the distance. The bullet caught his thigh. He clutched the leg, crawled a few feet, and stopped.
Karla scanned and waited. She rocked the Gator. “Hey, maybe we can turn this over.”
Alicia didn’t answer. Karla scooted underneath. Alicia’s face lay in the dirt, bloody wounds to her neck and back. She had no pulse. Karla rolled Alicia to begin CPR. A hole in her chest said there was no heart to restart.
* * *
A heavy machine gun sounded to the south. Ray, she hoped, saving their most formidable weapon until after the mortars stopped. Karla heaved on the Gator but couldn’t right it. She marched toward the road, the TAC 50 slung on her shoulder, an M16 ready to use, a nine millimeter on her hip.
She found Jeff and Glen, bloodied and lifeless, two hundred yards from a dead mortar team. They’d taken one by surprise and paid the price. Farther along, the mortar man with the leg wound had bled out. Karla moved on to the north gate. Four men jogged toward her, a half mile away. She dropped to the pavement and set up the TAC 50.
She took out two. The others rolled into the shallow ditch beside the road, hemmed in by a wire topped, six foot fence. The ditch ran true all the way to the gate at the intersection, leaving them nowhere to hide. Karla worked sideways with the rifle, edging to the road above the ditch. One man let off a three shot burst before he died. Karla’s bullet caught up with the other man a hundred feet south of the first.
She saw no one else moving and started home, remaining on high alert, no clear idea how many men she still faced, aware too, of the hazards of friendly fire.
Karla lifted the handheld. “Hey. Clear north.”
The metal fence to her right twanged. The radio flew to pieces. Karla saw stars as she smacked the ground hard. A bullet hit rock and ricocheted into her stomach. She rolled across the road toward the ditch. A bullet sliced her arm. Another glanced off her back. A second rifle fired from her left. Then a burst from the heavy. Then another.
Karla collapsed in the ditch. The world vanished in a white haze then returned. She tilted her head and let her vision settle out. A man lay across the roof ridge of the house formerly used by the spotters. She stood slowly, collected her guns and staggered on.
Karla slipped through the cut fence and stared at the dead man on the roof. His rifle lay below, the barrel still warm. Nearby, the scope used by the spotters. She climbed shakily to the roof on the other side, shoved the dead man off, and scanned the countryside from behind the chimney, aware of the fate of the previous tenant. A man moved in the ditch behind the trucks. Karla shot him.
Light flashed from a rise half a mile east—a man in tall grass scanning with binoculars. He shifted left. She followed. As she squeezed the trigger he lowered the glasses, and Karla had the bizarre thought he resembled Blake.
The chimney shattered in a burst from the heavy. Brick and shingles and chunks of wood slammed Karla. She tumbled to the roof edge, caught her foot in a rain gutter, and hooked a hand on the ladder she had climbed. The gutter bent and came loose in increments, its attachments failing as Karla tried to work free.
The ladder tilted, following the gutter, and began its slide for the ground. Karla’s legs swung, shattering the upper pane of a double hung window. She released the ladder as it swept away and seized hold of the window frames where they met at the lock. For a few seconds, Karla sat on the outside lip of the sill, trying to figure out how she got there. Then a bullet smashed the lower pane.
“You want to surrender?” The man’s voice came from below. He pointed a rifle at her from beside an ancient elm.
Karla looked down at her rifles, lost in the fall, and nodded.
“You somebody I could trade for a vehicle?”
Karla considered the question. “I sleep with the head honcho.”
“You don’t look so good, right now. Will he want you back?”
“He’ll give you a truck if I say you helped me.”
The man looked at Karla on the sill and at the ladder on the ground. “Step one. Drop that pistol on your belt.”
Karla lifted the gun gingerly and dropped it.
“I’m going to put up the ladder, and you’re going to climb down.”
“Okay.”
He bent for the ladder. Karla ducked and rolled through the window, landing on her back in shattered glass. She scrambled out of the bedroom and raced down the stairs, reaching the front door as the man charged in from the back. She cut left from the walk, dove for the dead sniper’s rifle and worked the bolt.
The man cleared the door and spun toward her. Karla’s bullet hit him above his belt. He stepped back, held his stomach and stared at her. She ejected the empty shell. Nothing replaced it. She threw the rifle and ran. He fired twice.
Karla collected her rifles from the back of the house, then cut a wide arc to the front. The man was sitting on the step, the rifle beside him.
“I’d like my pistol back.”
“I wouldn’t have hurt you.”
“There’s too many that would.”
He lifted her gun from his pocket and dropped it next to the rifle.
“Why didn’t you just shoot me when you had the chance?” Karla asked.
He coughed. “I didn’t know you were so dangerous.”
“How’d you get over here?”
“They sent me to find the spotters. They were dead. A machine gun was tearing our guys to pieces. Thought I’d sit it out.”
“You really wanted to trade me?”
“It was worth a try. But no offense, I didn’t believe any head honcho had you for a girlfriend.”
“If I gave you a truck right now, where would you go?”
He laughed into a cough. “Not far.”
“If by some miracle you lived, then what?”
“Why do women ask so many questions?”
“To try to understand why men do so many stupid things.”
“Shit. I’ve gotta die pestered by a feminist.”
“One more question. Would you rather I shot you or got you help?”
Chapter 100
Karla leaned on the gate to her drive, a white cloth tied to the rifle slung on her left shoulder. The house was gone but for a piece of the west wall. The top of her first addition was obliterated. The second, untouched. Ray peeked around a corner. He spoke into the handheld and then stepped to the drive. He hugged her. She hugged back with all her strength. They walked slowly to the building’s entrance. Rainy met them and stared at her in fright.
Karla sat on a bench in the courtyard between the additions and with Ray laid out the mop up. Thirteen people milled around them; Brittany wouldn’t leave the monitors. They sent a crew in a shot up Humvee to find the men who fled from the south gate. Karla and Ray each led a squad to round up bodies and equipment. They towed vehicles from the south with her tractor and the invader’s bulldozer. The ones on the north though full of holes, still ran. She fetched Alicia, Jeff, and Glenn. The last man she’d shot was dead when she returned.
The Humvee came back with four captured. They’d jumped into the road and flagged down the vehicle. Two brought in dead had second thoughts when their own men didn’t greet them. Lamar returned at nightfall, the gates repaired, barriers in place. A double team was put on the cameras.
Karla had lost her cellar bedroom and her alternate in the first addition. Several offered theirs. She took a sleeping rol
l to the barn. Ray followed. She rinsed her blood matted hair in a bucket and wondered if she had a concussion. Ray helped her with the bandage, then with the five inch slice to her arm. He admired the bruises to her back and stomach beneath her body armor.
Karla sat while Ray fixed a straw berth and laid out their rolls. Karla kicked off her boots and curled up on her bed. Ray slid in beside her.
“Hit four times and still breathing. You’re the luckiest woman alive.”
Karla rolled to look at him. Her eyes misted over. “If I was, I’d still have Jessie.”
Chapter 101
Ray woke with Karla’s head on his chest. He felt a kinship he couldn’t put to words. It was not love or respect. They were connected. They had survived the impossible. More than once, it seemed. She was risk averse, yet under pressure, fierce and single minded—the most intense person he’d ever known. She’d saved his life three times, at least. Four counting yesterday. Yet he knew she did not really like him. But not why she felt that way. Or, why she hadn’t gone with him, yet later followed. Or why she hadn’t asked him to stay, when it is so obvious here is where she wanted to be.
“Do you enjoy sleeping with brain injured women?”
“I hadn’t really thought about it, but I suppose I do.”
“Then how come I’m still dressed.”
“I couldn’t stand the pained screams as I tried to rip off your clothes.”
“Do you want a rain check?”
Ray laughed. “How did you ever have Jessie?”
“Roger asked the same question. He was asleep. He thought it was a dream.”
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