Lionhearts (Denver Burning Book 5)

by Algor X. Dennison

  “Better hurry up, brother,” Liam called. “There are some mean-looking dudes coming this way. Apparently they’re not finding what they wanted inside the houses.”

  Mike blasted the padlock, but it was a large, hardened one and although he dented it and sent hot shards of metal flinging into the debris pile, the chain remained fastened around the gate. He fired again, but still the lock held.

  Tara groaned in pain as she hurled herself over the top of the fence, one of its spikes tearing a gash in her pant leg. She felt heavily to the ground outside and then rushed to the driver’s side of the van.

  “Time’s up, bro!” Liam yelled at Mike, and then he fired his rifle. It was hard to see in the gathering darkness, but the patter of running footsteps made it plain that several of the mobsters were converging on the crowd of helpless residents, many of whom were growing frantic. There was nowhere left to run; they were caught against the fence.

  Liam fired again, and one of the approaching men yelled in pain and stopped. A few of the others slowed and moved away to the sides, searching for cover. Several more rushed headlong at Liam, trusting to the darkness and the strength of numbers to get to him before he could shoot them all.

  Mike had been reloading his shotgun with a few more shells, and quickly chambered one. He hit the chain this time instead of the padlock and nearly succeeded in tearing one of the links, but it still held well enough to keep the gate firmly shut and all Mike got for his troubles was a shard of hot metal embedded in his wrist. Cursing, he swiveled and moved to his brother’s side, aiming his gun at the approaching attackers.

  “Where’s the food?” one of the angry men shouted. “Tell us where all your food is, or we’re going to butcher the lot of you!” Other attackers around him echoed the sentiment, and they moved toward the group of frightened residents, who were now moving like a flock of startled geese to get away from the onslaught of the looters.

  Liam ducked behind the wheel well of the car blocking the gate, and fired again. Mike shot a man who was raising an arm to throw something into the crowd. But ten more swelled the ranks of the mob into a force that drove toward the Leonhardt brothers’ position with deadly intent.

  Shoulder to shoulder, Mike and Liam blazed away at the group ahead of them in the darkness, taking down three more of the looters. Return fire pinged around them, shattering the windshield of the car and slamming into the ground on either side. Gemma screamed, pressing back against the rear wall with the rest of the panicked residents.

  Mike had to stop again to reload just as the gunfire around them intensified. He was unsure if he’d be able to get the shotgun back into action before the attackers were upon him, and muttered a quick prayer that he knew might be his last.

  But when he looked up, the three attackers he and Liam had dispatched in the center of the street had somehow become six, and the rest of the attackers were scattering to either side. Some were limping, and as Mike watched another was hit in the back by something and fell to the ground. Their advance was broken.

  Mike looked at his brother, impressed, but then he realized that Liam hadn’t fired in several seconds. Someone else out in the darkness had taken the mob from behind and sent them running for cover.

  Another shot rang out, and one of the attackers that had knelt by a mailbox to take aim at the Leonhardt boys slumped down to the pavement.

  “Did you see that?” Liam said. “The flash came from behind that truck over there.” He pointed up the street.

  “Save your ammo. Just cover the street near us,” Mike said. “And don’t shoot whoever that is back there, he’s saving our bacon!”

  Turning back to the gate, Mike pumped two shells into the chain directly where he had hit it the first time. It gave way with an ear-ringing clank, and the gate swung loose. On the other side, Tara was pushing at the van without effect. “It’s in neutral, but I can’t budge it!” she shouted. “I think the tired are slashed.”

  “Get out of the way!” Mike yelled to her. “Come on, everybody. Push!” He threw his shoulder into the gate, and ten of the residents around him rushed to help. A few more shots were squeezed out in the street behind them, but they ignored the gunfire to focus their efforts on the gate, their only hope of escape.

  Slowly, slowly, the van began to roll backward into the street on the other side of the fence, and the gate creaked open.

  “Dude, they’re all gone,” Liam said, putting up his rifle and joining Mike to push at the gate. “The whole mob just disappeared. I guess they weren’t up to facing a crossfire. Ha!”

  The van finally rolled all the way out into the street and the gate opened wide.

  “Go, go! Everybody out!” Mike yelled. He and Liam took up positions on either side of the gate, aiming their guns back into the neighborhood.

  Tara popped up behind them, grinning as the residents of the gated community streamed out into the darkened streets, fleeing the place as fast as they could. “We did it. You guys, we did it! I love you so much!”

  Suddenly a shadow loomed out of the night. “Friendly, don’t shoot!” it called out.

  “Dad?” Tara asked, a quaver in her voice. She recognized the voice, hoarse as it was.

  Walt walked up, swiveled to cover the street behind him with his rifle, then turned again to face his daughter. He slung his rifle behind him as they moved through the gate and took shelter behind the box van. Then he caught his daughter up in his arms and hugged her tight.

  “Tara! Oh, Tara, I am so glad to see you.”

  “Me too, Dad,” was all Tara could choke out. They held each other, crying for a moment, while Mike and Liam guarded the gate.

  “Okay, Dad, Tara. Time for us to get away from here,” Mike said. Liam was sniffling too much to see clearly, so Mike pushed them all away from the van and out into the night.

  A block away from the Crestwood deathtrap they’d nearly been caught in, they met up with Gemma again. All the other residents of the gated community, including the woman that had let Tara and Gemma inside, had quickly disappeared. Only Gemma and her two elderly friends stuck around with the Leonhardt family.

  “You’ll have to move fast if you’re coming with us,” Walt told them. “We’re going west, straight out of the city, and we’re not stopping for anything.”

  “We’ll go as far as Lakewood,” the elderly man said. “We’ve got a son lives there, we’d like to make it to his house.”

  “Fair enough.” Walt led the little group forward. Liam ranged ahead several yards, peering around corners and silently scouting the way. Mike hung back, making sure they weren’t followed or attacked from the rear.

  They walked quickly through the streets. Gunfire in the distance told them the Crestwood violence wasn’t quite over, and it also wasn’t the only conflict raging that night. One bright flare-up to the north marked a large building that was going up in flames, unrelated to the fight they had just left.

  The group avoided anything that looked like it might lead them toward people, and they stayed quiet in their movements and conversation both for keeping out of earshot of others and so that they could clearly hear what was going on around them.

  “How did you find us so quickly, Dad?” Mike asked his father quietly as they walked along the edge of a city park.

  “I got to Tara’s place pretty quick and found your note. It wasn’t much farther from there,” Walt replied.

  “But what about that off-limits zone with the purple flags?” Liam asked, falling back to trot alongside the others for a moment. “Didn’t you run into that crazy gang of women?”

  “You mean the Violets?” Walt asked. “Sure, I ran into them. Nice ladies. They told me you’d been through and pointed the way for me.”

  Mike and Liam were dumbstruck. “They tried to kill us! We almost didn’t make it out of there,” Liam told Walt.

  Walt shrugged. “They mentioned you had a bit of an altercation, but they didn’t say anything about shooting. What did you make them upset for
? I was seriously thinking of recruiting them to our evacuation party. They seemed to really know what they were about, and we could have used them. But they didn’t seem interested in leaving their territory.”

  Mike shook his head. “I don’t believe it. I just don’t believe it.” He turned to Tara. “You’re in for a couple of surprises too, sis. Dad’s got us signed up to help an entire band of orphans to escape.”

  “Yeah, speaking of the orphans,” Walt said. “We really need to hustle. It’s way past sundown and Estela’s going to be getting really edgy about now.”

  “Who’s Estela?” Tara asked.

  Walt spent the next hour giving his daughter a brief rundown of their travels up that point, with frequent interruptions to navigate tricky parts of their route or to quiet down as they passed some area showing signs of life.

  Two hours later they made it back to the barrio, in half the time it had taken Mike and Liam to track Tara down to her temporary refuge at Crestwood that afternoon. They only had to use their guns once, to ward off a couple of ugly robbers that stumbled out of a garage nearby to confront them. When they saw how well-armed the group of travelers were, the two thugs disappeared without any shots fired.

  As they filtered into the barrio past the trap lines Walt and his sons had placed earlier, they looked around carefully for signs of life. They saw no one until they got to the office apartment. Standing out front was Jeremy, the young man who’d been assigned to the observation post that morning. He was the only one around.

  “You came back,” he told Walt with a tinge of surprise in his voice.

  “I said I would. Where’s Estela and the others?” Walt asked.

  “They’re all gone,” Jeremy replied. “They couldn’t wait. They headed out to the canal about forty-five minutes ago. With all the children, everybody.”

  Walt cursed under his breath. “Okay. Why aren’t you with them?”

  “To keep the Carniceros’ attention on this neighborhood and not on the back streets leading to the canal. I’ve got candles and a couple of flashlights in apartment windows, and I’ve been moving them around now and then. If the bad guys are watching, I wanted them to think we’re all still here.”

  “Have you seen anyone approaching? Any of our traps go off?”

  “I heard a stack of tin cans crashing down about fifteen minutes ago. Might have just been a cat or dog…”

  “But probably not. Are you ready to go?”

  “Yeah. Well, Estela wanted me to get rid of some papers in her office that she didn’t want the bad guys to find. I was thinking about setting fire to the place right before I left.”

  “No, don’t do that,” Walt admonished. “That’d draw every thug in the city like bugs to a light bulb. Just dump the papers in the latrine and let’s get out of here.”

  Five minutes later, the group plus Jeremy headed north into the no-man’s-land between the barrio and the Carniceros’ camp. They moved quickly and silently to join the others at the canal before the neighborhood was overrun.

  Chapter 27: Into the Lion’s Den

  Sarah had set out at sundown to find Jess. Amy was back at the house with strict orders not to open up to anybody. Jim Travers had come along, but Sarah almost wished she’d left him behind.

  “If you ask me, it’s a lost cause,” he said for the third time that evening. “Girl wants to go, she’s gone. You can’t bring her back. She’ll be miles from here by now.”

  Sarah sighed. “I know, Jim. I just need to do what I can. If it was your girl, you’d go after her.”

  “But she isn’t your girl either, Sarah.”

  “My brother’s daughter is almost the same as my own, Jim.”

  They walked in silence until they came to the house they’d been making their way toward. Moving with soft footsteps down the dark country lane, flashlight beams bobbing up and down with each step, they could hear the breeze rustling through the tree branches that lined the road. Both of them carried shotguns, but it was a precaution Sarah resented. She knew that if it came to shooting, she was unlikely to come out ahead.

  The glow of warm candles inside the house made their steps grow quicker, and soon they reached its front porch. Sarah knocked at the door of the house, which belonged to a distant neighbor she’d met only once. Murph and Jim knew the people pretty well, though, and Sarah figured that their house would be directly on Jess’s route west toward Oregon. If anyone had seen her, it would be the Claytons.

  The door opened to reveal Nancy Clayton and Murph, who was already there and in deep conversation. Nancy invited Sarah and Jim in and they stood in the living room while they talked.

  “Yep, we saw her,” Nancy said. “I was just telling Murph here. The militia picked her up.”

  Sarah’s eyes narrowed. “Picked her up? What do you mean?”

  “The militia men. You know, Terry Hayes and them. They intercepted her as she was riding her bike past one of their checkpoints.”

  “Checkpoints? Nancy, Murph, what’s this all about? I haven’t heard anything about any checkpoints.”

  Nancy looked at Murph. “You haven’t been out this way in the last few days, I guess, Mrs. Leonhardt. The militia, they set up checkpoints on the road half a mile north of my place, and again over on highway eighty-six, to control traffic coming into the area. And out of it, apparently.”

  “What traffic? This is outrageous,” Sarah replied. “Has the sheriff been notified?”

  Murph shrugged. “Sheriff is stuck in town, last I heard. I doubt he wants to come all the way out here and mess with some guys that probably have him outgunned.”

  “Well, what can we do? Where have they taken Jess?” Sarah asked.

  “Probably to the Masonic hall,” Nancy said. “They kicked the masons out last week and set up in there as their headquarters. That’s where they do all their drills and whatnot.”

  Sarah knew the place. She’d passed it a hundred times on the road. “And you think they’re keeping my niece imprisoned there?”

  “Well, I don’t know about imprisoned,” Nancy said. “Some of the militia guys are pretty reasonable. My sister’s husband’s one of them. I don’t know if they’d do a thing like that, not without cause to think that a person was a threat.”

  Sarah went to the door. “Okay. Well, I’m going there and I’m getting my niece out, no matter what they say. Are you coming, Jim?”

  Jim didn’t say anything. He stood still in the living room next to Murph.

  “I said, are you coming with me, Jim?”

  Jim held up his hands. “Now, Sarah, look. I came out here with you, I’ve been helping with everything from cattle to coyotes. But I can’t be walking in there and taking on militia members! Why, they’d have my farm for breakfast. You ought to call on Bob Constantinas in the morning, see if he can sort this out for you.”

  Sarah opened the door. “Good evening, everyone. I’m going to take my niece home.”

  She walked down the road in the dark, saving her flashlight batteries for later. The people she’d left behind stood on the Claytons’ porch watching her go, but she didn’t turn around. When she got to the main road, she turned east and walked for three miles at a brisk pace.

  Halfway through the fourth mile, nearly within sight of the masonic hall, she paused near a thicket of aspens. Rubbing her hand up and down the walnut stock of the shotgun cradled in her arm, she said a silent prayer. Then, hardly believing what she was doing, she leaned the gun against a tree near the road, and walked away from it.

  Three times as she covered that last half mile toward the militia headquarters, she almost turned around and ran back to her gun. But each time she reaffirmed her thinking, and it felt right in her mind and her heart. She might be going into a serpents’ nest, but threatening and blustering with a gun would only get her involved in violence she wasn’t willing or prepared to win at. That would be playing into her opponents’ hands, playing their game.

  Instead, she intended to overcome them with wo
rds. It sounded awfully weak when she said it like that, and repeating maxims in her mind like “the pen is mightier than the sword” didn’t help much either. But nevertheless she had a strong feeling that what she was doing was the correct choice, and she was avoiding danger rather than walking into it helpless.

  The masonic hall was dimly lit, a single torch burning outside atop a short pole stuck in the ground. A few small candles inside illuminated the interior, but Sarah could see no one moving inside. Taking a deep breath, she walked up the wooden steps.

  The front door opened before she could reach for it. A young man stood there, gun in hand. It was a short, ugly weapon, a kind of semi-automatic pseudo-military gun that Sarah couldn’t put a name to, but she knew it was for killing people instead of animals. The young man was Jaren, her daughter’s former friend. His face registered almost as much shock as Sarah felt upon recognizing him.

  The two of them spoke at the same time, which felt to Sarah as if she was getting things off to a terrible start, but soon proved to be serendipitous.

  “Jaren! I’m surprised to see you here—” Sarah began.

  “State your name and password—” the young man got out, but then stopped, confused.

  “I came to see if my niece was here,” Sarah said.

  “You can’t come in,” Jaren said, stumbling over his words, face turning red. He blocked the open doorway with his body. Sarah tried to see past him, but he closed the door a few inches to prevent it. “You haven’t got authorization.”

  Sarah smiled. “Of course I don’t have authorization,” she said, trying for a motherly tone. “I’m not involved in whatever you fellows are up to, here. Neither is my niece, Jess, and if you know where she is, I must see her immediately.”

  Jaren didn’t seem to know how to reply to that, and as he was formulating an answer a door opened at the far end of the building with a loud creak. A crack of light shined out and a more mature man’s voice called out.