by Trent Reedy
His wife came running down the stairs. “Michio, what’s the matter?”
“Where’s Emma?”
“She was taking a nap. What’s going on?” She finally saw me. “What’s he doing here?”
“Pack up all our suitcases. We need all the clothes, blankets, and food we can take with us.”
“Tell me what happened,” she said.
“Coach,” I tried.
“Just do it! Now! We’re leaving now!” Coach was shaking. “They killed Carlos and Rosa! Lynched them.”
Mrs. Shiratori gasped and put her hands over her mouth. “Oh no.”
“I saved a full tank of gas in the minivan,” Coach said. “We’re leaving.”
“Listen to me!” I shouted. “You go on your own, the Brotherhood will stop you, and with no witnesses around, outside of town …” I let the thought trail off. He understood. “We have a plan. A bunch of us are leaving town together.”
He shook his head. “No. No. They told me about that. You people think you’ll have better luck getting out of town in buses and everything than I will in my one little van? You’re asking for a firefight you can’t win.”
“I really think I can sneak us out of here.” I told Mr. and Mrs. Shiratori my plan. Now that Cal was on our side, we had an even better shot at getting our hands on enough fuel. “If it does come down to a fight, me and my guys can hold off the Brotherhood long enough for the civilians to escape.” I could hear someone walking around upstairs and lowered my voice so his daughter wouldn’t hear. “Coach, I was with Cal last night, and we heard Rickingson talking about plans for attacking your family. If you try to go alone, you’ll all be killed. Come with us. That way, you’ll at least have a chance.”
Mrs. Shiratori put her hands on Coach’s shoulders and spoke very quietly to him. Finally, he nodded. “Okay. Okay. But when do we leave?”
“Oh, we’re not waiting around anymore,” I said. “I’m putting out the go call tonight.”
* * *
When the Shiratoris had packed clothes and blankets in one suitcase and grabbed all the food in their house, we went back to Cal’s. JoBell met me at the door. She’d been standing guard with her dad’s rifle. “We’ve been trying to calm Jaclyn and Cal since we got back,” she said as we led the Shiratori family down to the basement. Becca showed little Emma Shiratori the pinball machine while Coach and Mrs. Shiratori whispered together.
I kissed my fiancée. “He still blames himself?”
JoBell bit her lip for a moment. “The rope used to hang them was the same —”
“I know. Red with blue flecks.” I rubbed my aching left hand. “I had no idea they’d go after the Martinezes. No idea they’d go this far.”
“It’s a good thing Jackie was at Caitlyn’s last night,” said JoBell.
Becca joined us. “Sweeney is with Jaclyn. TJ’s with Cal. We figured they shouldn’t be alone. So far, we’ve kept Cal from telling Jackie too much about what happened.”
“It’s not like he knew what they were going to use that stuff for,” I said. “If we had any clue that the Martinezes were being targeted …”
“Right, Danny,” Becca said in her old, soft voice. “But nobody’s thinking straight at a time like this.”
“Well, this is it. There’s no doubt anymore,” I said. “The Brotherhood is killing people, whoever pisses them off or isn’t white. Shiratori and Sweeney are next on their list. We can’t wait around. We’re launching the op tonight.”
“You sure you don’t want to wait until the US attacks Spokane?” JoBell asked. “We could use that distraction.”
“In three days, the Brotherhood is going to make me one of them, and then who knows what they’ll have me doing? I don’t want to get stuck in a position where Crow’s sending me on some crazy Brotherhood mission and I can’t help with Operation Exodus. And Cal’s really shaken up. You know he won’t be able to keep his anger bottled for long. If the Brotherhood notices, they’ll watch him more carefully, and then he won’t be able to help us get that fuel. We’re out of time. We have to make our move before we lose our chance.”
Becca nodded, and I clasped my hand on her shoulder. “You, Sweeney, and TJ will tell Mrs. Pierce to give the go call. I’ll get the fuel thing figured out with Cal.”
Moments later, me and JoBell sent TJ with Becca and Sweeney and joined Cal in his bedroom. The room was at least four times the size of his bedroom in the trailer where he grew up, but he’d set it up a lot like his old place, with an old, tattered poster of Thor from the third Avengers movie. Thor had been his role model when he started lifting weights. “Gonna be big as Thor. Big as Thor,” he’d say before a bench press. A plastic model of an F-35 jet was on his dresser, next to some trophies that each of us got for flag football in like the fourth grade. Another wall was covered with his huge collection of Freedom Lake Minutemen football and volleyball posters.
Cal sat on the edge of the bed in the middle of it all, sniffling with his eyes all red. When he saw me, he broke into sobs again. “Oh shit, you guys. Oh shit. It’s my fault.”
JoBell sat next to him and wrapped him in a big hug. “Cal, honey, you couldn’t have known what they were going to do with the rope.”
“JoBell’s right. And if you hadn’t gone to get that stuff, someone else would have,” I said. “But I gotta talk to you, man. I need you to get your shit together and listen.” I didn’t want to be hard on him when he was hurting like this, but we were out of time. “You want to help Jackie now, and me, and a whole bunch of other people? A bunch of us have a plan for dealing with the Brotherhood.” I picked up the armband he’d thrown on the floor and shook it in front of him. “Are you in?”
“Anything.” He choked. “I’ll do anything.”
“Good,” I said. “Put this damned armband back on. We’re leaving town to go someplace safe. Until we get there, you keep this on and pretend like you’re a good little Brotherhood trooper.”
Cal frowned. “That’s it?”
“No. The Brotherhood hit us hard today. Tonight we’re gonna hit ’em back.”
Cal gripped the steering wheel furiously as he drove us up the long and winding road through the dark woods. “I know this is supposed to be a quick, easy mission, Danny,” he said. “And a lot of guys have been pulled from warehouse guard duty to prep for the fight in Spokane. But I ain’t complaining if these assholes decide they want a fight.”
“This isn’t a battle, Cal. You’ll drive in there like you’re still cool with the Brotherhood, just like you did last night, just like we got past that patrol when we left town. You’ll explain that they need the fuel truck in Spokane, and your friends came along to drive your pickup back. That’s all.”
“Don’t misunderstand me,” Sergeant Crocker said from the seat behind me. “I wholeheartedly hope we can avoid a fight, but if it comes to that, at least we have our little insurance policy in the back of the truck.”
Crocker was talking about JoBell and Becca, who were hiding under a tarp. JoBell carried Specialist Danning’s Barrett 82A1 .50-caliber rifle. We’d found a hell of a scope for that beast of a gun, and with it, JoBell could shred any target before he even saw her. Becca had an M240B machine gun with plenty of 7.62 rounds.
“But we’re not gonna … I mean, like you said, this is kind of a sneak in, sneak out situation, right?” Skylar Grenke’s dad sat hunched over his shotgun, his chin resting on the end of the barrel like an idiot.
I jerked a thumb back toward him. “Mr. Grenke, you want to be sure you practice muzzle discipline.”
“Oh. Right.” He sat up. “Sorry.”
What was he saying sorry to me for? It would be his own head blown off if the gun accidentally fired. We hadn’t wanted to bring Grenke along. Skylar was kind of a jackwad, and it was looking to be a like-son-like-father-type situation here. But Tabitha Pierce had made us bring him. “You and your friends need to start getting used to the fact that you’re not in this alone anymore,” she’d said to me.
The weird thing wasn’t that we were working with people outside our group. It was that adults were listening to me. I was used to getting bossed around by adults. In the Army, the older guys had all clearly outranked me.
Working with Operation Exodus was different. Not only did the older people hear me out on my ideas about different parts of the mission, but some of them took orders from me or treated me like I had authority, even though compared to them, I was just a kid. The war had turned everything upside down.
I squeezed the barrel of JoBell’s father’s Springfield M1A Scout Squad rifle. Mr. Grenke here was going to obey my orders, or he’d end up getting us killed.
“Here we go,” Cal said as we approached the compound. Like a bizarre flashback to last night, the lights came on and the truck was surrounded by gunmen again.
“Cal?” Crocker asked worriedly.
“What do we do? What do we do?” Mr. Grenke sounded like he was about to freak out.
“We don’t panic,” I said. “We act like everything’s cool. Here we go. You got this, Cal.”
“Right,” Cal said. “Everybody calm the hell down.”
“Come on, buddy,” I said. “Sell it.”
Cal nodded and got out of the pickup with his hands up. “Hey. I need your help. We gotta hurry.”
The men eased up on their rifles. “Cal?” a big, bearded man said. “Nobody is scheduled for a supply run tonight. Who’s in the truck with you?”
“Nathan Crow sent me here to get the fuel truck. We gotta gas up a bunch of vehicles in Spokane for the battle. He couldn’t spare none of our brothers, so I brought some civilian friends to drive my pickup back. I gotta move fast. That fight’s gonna go hot any minute now.”
“We’re going to have to call that in,” said the guy with the beard. “Our comms haven’t been working. Damned US Army jamming us up. We got a radio, though.” He motioned to someone at the gatehouse, and the chain-link barrier in front of us rolled to the side. “Stop in at the office to get the key to unlock the fuel truck’s steering wheel.”
“I got bolt cutters!” Cal shouted as he climbed back into the truck. “I’ll find a new chain for it later. We need to move.” He shut the door, threw the truck in drive, and sped up the gravel lane. “The radio antenna is about a hundred yards from the fuel truck,” he said to Crocker.
“Roger that,” Crocker said. “After you cut the chain on the steering wheel, I’ll take the bolt cutters. It’s only a matter of cutting one cable.”
“I’ll go with you,” I said.
“I can handle it,” said Crocker.
“Rule number one,” I said. “Nobody goes alone.”
The pickup slid to a halt beside the big, dark green M978 HEMTT fuel truck. There had to be thousands of gallons of diesel in that trailer. Cal left his pickup motor running, and we all hurried out. All of us but Mr. Grenke.
“And, um … What do you want me to do?” Mr. Grenke asked.
“Right,” I said. “Can you sit here and guard the pickup?”
The man gave this big nod. “Yep. Absolutely. Should I aim the gun or …”
He was still talking when I left. Cal was up in the fuel truck cab in seconds. “Here!” He threw down the bolt cutters and, seconds later, a heavy chain and padlock.
I caught the bolt cutters and sprinted after Crocker, who hadn’t waited for me. “It would help … if we had more light,” Crocker said when we reached the heavy-duty antenna. It was so tall that it had to be held up by a bunch of support wires. Behind us, the fuel truck started up, and we heard its air brakes pop-wheeze. Crocker found a thick cable at the base of the antenna tower. “This one right” — sparks burst from a wire and Crocker jumped back — “here. That should do it. Their radio is useless now. They won’t be able to transmit or re —”
“Come on!” I yanked him by the arm and ran back toward Cal’s truck. We couldn’t waste time talking. The Brotherhood could figure out what we were up to any second, and Operation Exodus was set to launch, with or without us, in an hour and a half. It had already taken us forever to get up here. We’d have to really gun it on the way back. “What are you doing?!” I yelled at Mr. Grenke, who was out of the truck walking around, holding his rifle up all weird. “Get in the truck!” When we reached the pickup, I patted the wall of the truck bed. “We’re all good,” I said to the girls. “Hang in there.” I jumped in the driver’s seat.
Seconds later, I was following Cal in the fuel truck as we drove down the lane toward the front gate. My heart thudded heavily, and an electric current ran through every sense I had. All along the bumpy road, I checked my mirrors — side, rear, side — over and over, watching to see if they’d figured us out.
Cal’s HEMTT stopped at the closed gate. “What the hell? Why aren’t they letting him through?” I said.
“Oh no.” Mr. Grenke rocked back and forth in his seat. “This is bad. This is so bad.”
“We could be in trouble,” Crocker said.
“From the ‘no shit’ department.” I drove the pickup off the road and pulled up to the driver’s side of Cal’s cab. The four Brotherhood guys were back out with their rifles ready again.
Cal leaned out his window and smacked his hand on the outside of the metal door. “Open the gate! Crow needs this fuel!”
“Just hold on a second,” Big Beard said. “The guys in the office called down here on the field phone and said they’re having trouble with the radio. They can’t call to check on any of this. So why don’t you and your friends get out of your vehicles and set for a spell over here in the guard shack?”
There were four of them. While Big Beard was talking, the other three drew beads on Cal, me, and Crocker. If they got us into the guard shack, we were screwed. Eventually one of them would figure to go check the antenna. They’d discover the sabotage, and then it’d be all over.
“Come on, Brother,” Cal said. “We really need to get to Spokane. Our people got the biggest fight of the war coming up, and you’re worried about a busted radio?”
“I’m not kidding,” Big Beard said. “Shut off your motors and get the hell out of your vehicles.”
There was no way out of this. We’d have to play their game for now. I put the truck in park and killed the engine.
“Hey, you guys think this machine gun makes me look fat?” Becca’s voice came from behind the cab. The guys looked up for a second before the M240B roared into them. Big Beard’s skull split just below his eye. Another guy folded in half at the crotch as the red-hot streak of a tracer round sliced his groin. At least three rounds shredded the third man’s chest. The guy on the far right held his hands over his gut an instant before his shoulder and throat turned to pink mist.
I was out of the pickup by then. I leaned over the hood and aimed at the two guys in the gatehouse. One made it out the door of the shack, but I dropped him with two rounds to the chest. The other I blasted right through the window. He left a red smear as his body slid down the back wall.
An even louder shot came from behind me, and I ducked for a second before I saw JoBell firing clear up the hill toward the trailer in the distance. “This night vision scope is perfect,” she said calmly. She shot again in the same direction. I had no idea who she was aiming at way out there in the dark. “Damn. Stop moving, bastard.” She fired another round, then slowly swept the area through the rifle’s scope. She shot twice more, and that time we heard someone scream. She fired again to finish him. Then she brought the rifle back, I guess to check the office trailer up the road. “Okay, that’s everybody in range! Let’s roll out!”
That’s when I noticed a row of three pickup trucks a few yards back from the gatehouse. “Jo, rifle!” I held out my hands, and she tossed the heavy weapon down to me.
“Here.” She threw me a second magazine.
I ran to the first pickup, crouching to aim the .50-cal rifle straight at the grille. I fired twice for good measure, the rounds tearing huge holes through the radiator and into the engine blo
ck. While Cal opened the gate, I reloaded and moved to each truck down the line. If anyone was still alive in this compound, they wouldn’t be following us in those trucks until they got new engines.
JoBell met me back in front of Cal’s pickup. “You be careful.” She kissed me warm and deep. “I hate missing the op.”
“You’re not missing it. You’re protecting Cal and the fuel.” It didn’t make sense to draw more attention to ourselves by driving the HEMTT into Freedom Lake. Instead, Cal, Jo, and Mr. Grenke would take it south, away from town, and wait for our convoy. “When you get to the rendezvous point, keep that vehicle out of sight and stay on guard.” I glanced over my shoulder. “Oh, and try to look after Mr. Grenke. He’s kind of helpless with all this. We’ll join you soon.”
We kissed again. “I love you,” JoBell said.
“I love you more,” I said.
“Mr. Grenke,” I said. “You’re going with Cal and JoBell. Guard that gas.” Mr. Grenke was shaking, but he made his way toward the fuel truck. “You’ll be fine,” I said to him.
He stopped and wiped the sweat from his brow as he passed me. “What the hell happened to you kids? Becca mowed those guys down like it was just an average day. You shot the guys in the gatehouse. JoBell Linder, you were taking out guys like some kind of sniper. What have you all become?”
“Come on!” Becca shouted out the window from behind the wheel of Cal’s pickup. I was grateful for her impatience. I didn’t like thinking about the answer to his question. After squeezing JoBell’s hand, I ran to the passenger seat of Cal’s truck. JoBell took the big .50-cal rifle and followed Mr. Grenke into the fuel truck with Cal.
“Don’t worry, Wright. She’ll be okay,” Crocker said from the seat behind me as we rolled out of the Brotherhood compound toward the dangerous mission ahead.