“Look. I don’t have a suicidal bone in my body,” Robert told them. “I wouldn’t be leading this mission if I thought it was going to fail. We’re family, and we’ve been preparing for this. We’re solid, and we’re tight. We’re going to get Thomas out of there, and we’re going to get him home. All of us. Right?”
One by one, each member of the team said, “Right.”
“It’s that pre-dawn time when the overnighters are most tired and least alert,” Robert said. “Best time to hit them, but we need to move. We’re burning darkness right now.”
Chapter Seven
Randall and Robert went over the wall about 200 yards from the back gate. They carried only their sidearms and bladed weapons, to minimize their noise signature.
As Robert had predicted, the guards watching the gate were far from alert. One was sitting on a tree stump, dozing off.
The other was pacing back and forth near the small fire they’d built to ward off a bit of the nighttime chill.
On a signal from Robert, the two men went into action.
With a good couple of thousand people in the Compound, nobody knew everybody else.
The two cousins took advantage of this fact and the darkness to walk right up to the two guards before they drew on them.
“Hands up,” Robert said.
The two guards, taken by surprise, hesitated only briefly before complying.
“Over here,” he said, gesturing with his Ruger .357 towards a part of the wall in deep shadow.
Once they were all out of the firelight, Robert ordered the guards to carefully put their weapons on the ground and step back.
Randall and Robert kept their handguns trained on the guards while they moved forward and picked up their weapons.
“On your faces,” Robert said, having them follow him out of the firelight.
“We’re looking to get in and out without any killing, and we’d appreciate your help,” Randall said. “One of you got the key to that gate?”
“On a nail, just to the right,” one of the guards said.
Robert kept his Ruger aimed at the guards while Randall quickly let the rest of the team into the Compound.
Together, the rescue team searched the guards for any holdouts, bound them, and taped their mouths shut.
“OK,” Robert said, watching the seconds count own on his watch.
The rest of the team followed suit.
As soon as the second hand hit zero, Robert said, “You all know your jobs!”
He started making his way to the center of the Compound with Randall and Jane.
Bruce, Marcus and Claire went off to do their part.
The latter three each carried a spike awl. They went into the small motor pool and checked the first two Toyota Hi-Lux pickups they saw.
As Robert had hoped, the keys for each vehicle were in the ignition. Claire took Marcus’ Glock .40 in lieu of her AR-15, as it would be much less conspicuous, and made her way to an open common area near the east side of the Compound.
Under one of her father-in-law’s jackets, oversized for her, she carried three quart-sized milk jugs of gasoline.
Meanwhile, Marcus and Bruce took their awls and started spiking the tires of every other vehicle in the motor pool.
* * *
Closer to the center of the compound, Robert, Randall, and Jane were making good time.
They hugged buildings whenever they could, and when they came to an intersection two could watch the street both ways while the third crossed.
When the got to the main building, they gathered around one of the back doors.
Robert took longer than he’d have liked to pick the lock, the pressure to keep to a strict timeline making him jumpy.
Finally, he got the lock open, and his half of the rescue team stepped inside.
* * *
“Fire!” Claire shouted. “Fire! Fire!”
She had waited until she’d removed any fire extinguishers she could find and lit up the three different sheds before sounding the alarm.
As soon as she saw people moving towards the fires, she quieted down and slipped into the shadows to go back to the motor pool.
Whatever guards were on duty started running towards the burning sheds.
A low level of panic started building up as they discovered the fire extinguishers were no longer in their designated places.
Claire heard somebody say, “Pull up a water buffalo!”
Shortly afterwards, she was passed by two men heading for the motor pool at a dead run.
She had to think fast. It wasn’t going to take long for them to notice all of the flat tires.
Bruce and Marcus couldn’t just stick around waiting to be discovered in the only two vehicles that could drive – they’d need to get out of there.
Her chances of rendezvousing with them at the motor pool were not good at all, so she resorted to the contingency plan – meet the trucks at the main office.
* * *
“Things just got hot,” Robert said, as the sound of gunfire came from outside.
They’d covered about half of the first floor of the building, and hadn’t found Thomas yet.
Fortunately, they hadn’t run into any of the Compound’s people, either.
Randall realized that was very likely to change, when he heard a door down the hall open up.
He, Robert, and Jane tried to back into the last room they’d checked, but it was too far away.
In the dim light of two small LED lamps, one at either end of the hallway, they saw three men step into the hallway, turn, and look right at them.
The men were armed, but by the time they realized what they were looking at, the rescue team was already firing.
Robert and Randall each got five rounds downrange with their handguns. With the stronger recoil on her .30-30, Jane got just one shot off.
By the time she got her sight picture back, all of the targets were either down or back in the room they had come from.
There was the sound of footsteps up on the second floor, running down the hallway away from them. Company was on its way.
They’d passed a stairway at the door they came in. It was reasonable to assume there was another one at the far end of the building.
“You all might want to give up if you don’t want your buddy here to get it,” came a voice from down the hallway.
Randall swore. It was clear to him now where Thomas was, but it also looked like the rescue was going to fail.
Robert, in the process of reloading his .357, didn’t let that deter him.
Seeing Robert reloading his weapon made Randall remember to reload his. His hands shaking vigorously, he managed to eject the magazine from his Colt .45 and insert a fresh one. He picked up the old magazine and stuffed it away in one of his pockets. Magazines were now a precious commodity and he knew it would be unwise to leave any behind.
“Cover the end of the hallway,” Robert whispered to Jane, then looked at Randall and indicated the right side of the hallway. “Stay out of her line.”
Robert started slowly walking down the hallway, back to the wall.
Randall followed.
“Step out unarmed and we let you walk! You hurt our man, we hurt you!” Robert called out.
The footsteps upstairs were no longer audible.
“There’s more of us than of you,” came the voice from down the hall.
“I’ll still have plenty of time to kill you,” Robert said, still sidestepping down the hallway.
“Not likely.” The statement was punctuated by the sound of a single round going off from the room.
Robert and Randall gave up their attempts at stealth and ran the last dozen steps to the doorway.
Behind them, Jane’s Winchester fired.
Randall glanced left and saw somebody ducking back around a corner at the end of the hallway.
He left Robert to deal with the man who’d just shot his brother, taking up a position to back up Jane if anybody else showed ar
ound the corner.
He thought he heard a woman’s voice say something from the room, then he heard Robert say, “Thank God, Claire!”
Randall really wanted to look into the room, but another target appeared.
He and Jane both fired at it.
One of them scored a hit, judging by the sudden sounds of pain that came from the end of the hall.
Randall heard glass breaking in the room Robert was in, followed by his cousin yelling, “On me!”
Randall signaled for Jane to move up.
While she ran, he exchanged a few rounds with somebody who popped around the corner at the end of the hallway.
Jane tapped him on the shoulder, and said, “Switch.”
Randall let Jane take over covering the end of the hallway, and stepped into the room. Robert was taking Thomas over to the window of the room.
Claire was outside, splitting her attention between Robert and shooting at the Compound’s men with her borrowed Glock.
One of the Compound men was lying still in the middle of the room, blood pooling from his head.
Randall heard a truck come up to the building and skid to a halt. Jane fired two more rounds down the hallway.
Thomas was barely able to stand, but was doing his best. Randall came up and helped Robert lift him through the window.
Marcus was there, and with Claire covering him got Thomas into the bed of a pickup. A second truck skidded to a halt.
“Let’s go!” Bruce shouted.
“Jane!” Robert shouted, pointing at the window.
Jane didn’t need to be told twice. She went straight for the window and climbed through it.
Robert and Randall followed, rifle rounds from inside the building punching through the wall.
While they ran for the bed of Bruce’s truck, Marcus sped away with Thomas, Claire, and Jane.
It must have taken only fifteen seconds to clear the Compound, but to Randall, it felt like forever, as bullets cracked through the air above him or shattered the Hi-Lux’s windows.
Once they got through the gate, the walls that kept the inhabitants inside safe also hindered their ability to fire at the fleeing trucks.
Behind him, Randall could see two sets of headlights following them from down the main road of the Compound…
To Be Continued…
Surviving The EMP Page 6