Tom could see them all, and the trees and branches and the road ahead perfectly adequately in the fuzzy green picture created inside his night vision goggles, which amplified the ambient light 30,000 times. He saw that they were all lined up and ready, and began to walk ahead in a slight crouch, the barrel of his AR-15 carbine slowly traversing as he turned from side to side. The rest of them followed, with their gun barrels pointing outward on alternating sides of their line. Because of the blackness of the night they walked very closely together, only a few feet apart, close enough to see the faint shimmer of glowing chemlite juice on the back of the person in front of them.
Twice Tom had to stop the little column, to let them know where a dead tree had fallen across the road. He was the one man with nearly perfect vision, leading his little column of the blind. He whispered the message of the deadfall to his brother and helped him across, and each person in turn guided the next over the low trunks, until they were all across them and continuing on in their patrol order.
Except for Ranya, all of them had learned these basic patrolling skills in the Army or the Marines, and all of the men except Santander had done it for real in Vietnam. As they padded down the straight asphalt trail, brushing aside the dripping branches, the decades seemingly melted away and they were reborn as deadly night stalkers.
Five minutes later, the squad was nearing the northern end of the access road, where it ran onto the tarmac just to the east of building one. The woods were thinning out, and occasionally a few stars were visible through the overcast.
Tom, Carson and Mosby, one from each buddy pair, had a walkie-talkie radio. (Carson had picked up two pairs of FSR walkie-talkies at a Target store on his way to the Wagon Wheel; he considered it amazing that he could buy better radios at a discount store today for just a few bucks than the army had provided him in Vietnam.) All of them heard the four clicks at the same time and froze, halting the squad. Four clicks on the radio was the danger or emergency signal from Archie. They all sank down and crouched in place; it was becoming just light enough for their fully night-adapted eyes to see the upraised white fists of the radiomen signaling the halt.
“Hey Fred, this is Archie. We have a situation,” came their M-60 machine gunner’s voice from across the tarmac.
Carson pulled the palm-sized radio out of a pouch on his vest and depressed the transmit button. “Go ahead,” he replied, matter-of-factly. The use of the radios for in-the-clear voice communications was extremely dangerous and only a last resort, which Carson knew that Archie fully understood.
“There’s a car parked outside Bubba’s place, and another car from the hotel just pulled up. It looks like they’re going to take somebody for a ride real soon.”
Archie was correctly using non-military jargon, working from his brevity code list. Bubba’s place was building one; the hotel was a hangar. Since they were using family service radios, they had to drop the military alphas, bravos, rogers and overs, and strive to sound as innocuous as possible in case their conversation was picked up by a nearby scanner, possibly even in the big RV outside of hangar two.
“Okay Archie, is that all?”
“Um, the bus appears to be full, but the hotels are dark and quiet, nobody’s home. And nobody’s at Billy’s place, Billy’s place is closed, all the action is at Bubba’s.” Working from their prearranged brevity codes, which Edith had written on a cheat sheet, Archie had just said that the commo van RV was occupied, the hangars were dark and quiet, and nobody was going in or out of building two. The activity tonight was all at building one.
“Okay Archie, how many folks are at Bubba’s right now?”
“Hard to say for sure, two or three that I saw.”
“Okay, I got all that. We’ll swing by Bubba’s just as soon as we can.”
“Um, yeah, that sounds good boss. I wouldn’t wait.”
The ad-hoc rescue team was crouched in a little circle, with their backs close together, and their weapons aimed outward like a six pointed star.
“Can you all hear me?” asked Carson, speaking softly. “We’re going to change the plan from what we briefed, okay? There’s two vehicles parked outside building one, and Archie says it looks like they’re going to go for a ride. If they’re moving the prisoner, that’s a big problem. So we have to double-time it the rest of the way. It’s only about a hundred yards from here.”
After a moment Tom said, “Ahh, Sarge, if you’re gonna double-time, me and Harry…we’ll have to catch up later. If we try to double time it… Well, I can tell you, we don’t run too good.”
“Okay Tom, then keep setting the pace. Just make the best time you can, straight up the road. Here’s the change in plans: we’re going to skip building two, and put both assault teams into building one. Robin, you’re still the door puller, and then Jake and Fred will go in; buttonhook left and right just like you were going into B2, all right? I’ll go in third, to the left, and Robin, you go in last, to the right. Okay? Tom and Harry, your jobs won’t change, you’ll still be behind the corners of building two to cover the hangars. No shooting unless there’s no choice—your rifles will wake up the whole world. Everybody got it?” They all muttered that yes, they had got it. “All right then, let’s move out.”
****
A few minutes later the squad was crouched in the underbrush at the tree line, thirty feet from the back of building one. At the edge of their roof of dripping foliage they could tell that the rain had finally stopped, and swatches of stars were visible where the clouds were breaking apart. There was now enough light in the open to make hand signals faintly visible, but the ambient light also made their uncovered hands and faces shine.
Camouflage face paint had never been an issue. Once they were clear of the area after the attack, they couldn’t risk being stopped later with black and green grease behind their ears or under their chins. After the mission, they would need to quickly turn back into ordinary citizens, so they wore dark clothes, but no camouflage military uniform items other than Tom and Harry’s Gore-Tex raincoats.
From the cover of the tree line they could look up the gap between buildings one and two. There was no activity that they could see or hear. There were two windows on the back sides of each of the two white-painted buildings, but the windows were painted black and no light escaped from them. After a minute crickets began to take up their chirping call and answer song once again, unconcerned about the motionless giants squatting in their midst.
Carson clicked his radio transmit button slowly and deliberately two times: assault team in position, stand by for action. In response he heard the two clicks returned from Archie: “I heard you, I’m ready, and it’s safe for you to proceed.”
He then nodded to Tom, who was wearing the helmet-mounted NVGs, pointed his finger at him, and then pointed across to his next position. Tom slowly nodded back at Carson, then rose and walked across the open space, his rifle aimed to his left toward the backs of the hangars. Once across the open danger zone, abandoned machinery and giant wooden wire spools provided good cover in the fifteen feet of space between the two buildings. Tom moved between them to the tarmac side, where he knelt and made a quick peek to the right around the corner of building one, then he looked back across the front of building two toward the hangars. When he was satisfied, he gave two clicks on his radio.
One at a time, they slipped across the thirty feet of open ground to the relative safety between the buildings. Harry took his position as rear security behind the southeast corner of building two, facing the backs of the hangars; Tom was already at the northeast corner aiming his rifle along the fronts of the hangars. Their security set toward the hangars, the other four crept in a line to the front of their objective, building one.
Carson was now at point; he peered to his right around the cinder block corner of building one. It was about thirty feet to the front door, which had its exposed hinges on the far side. On its near side was a door knob, and above the knob was a vertical grab handle. This squa
red up with what Ranya had said earlier about how the doors opened, based on her earlier recon. This was critical information; their entire entry method was based on the way the door was set up and opened. He could see that the door was just slightly ajar, standing an inch proud from the frame. This would vastly simplify their next task.
Two vehicles were parked parallel to the front wall, one on either side of the door. Closest was a gray or silver Mercedes. Its trunk was open toward him and its motor was running; he could see the little cloud of smoky vapor popping out of its exhaust. On the other side of the Mercedes was a medium-sized SUV with a luggage rack on top.
The running motor and open trunk of the Mercedes told him why Archie had risked the emergency radio call: they were moving somebody. No other possible explanation came to Carson’s mind.
It was time. Ranya was crouched behind him along the wall, followed by the two cops, their MP-5s held at the ready.
Carson reached behind him and tapped Ranya on her knee, and signaled her to move past him. She walked quickly around the corner with her silenced .22 held in front in her right hand. The video camera which had been inside her raincoat was hanging around her neck by a strap. It was already turned on, and it left a faint glow from its viewfinder eyepiece shining up onto her throat and chin. She stopped on the far side of the door. Then he waved the two cops around him, and they scurried directly to the right side of the door, their MP-5’s shouldered. Phil Carson followed behind them and took his position against the wall, third in line. Faint light escaped from the door’s near edge and from beneath it.
Ranya reached across the door to the vertical metal handle bar and grasped it with her left hand. As she grabbed it Santander crouched in front of the door’s right edge, his MP-5SD already up on his shoulder, his selector switch on burst, his right finger just brushing the trigger guard and his left thumb on the gun light’s pressure switch. Mosby was standing tall directly behind and over Santander, with his own MP-5’s suppressor-shrouded barrel above and to the right of his buddy’s shoulder.
Ranya glanced across the door to Carson, and he nodded back to her. With wide eyes she staged-whispered, “Ready?” and Carson and the two cops nodded yes in return. She was set; they were all like compressed springs. She whispered “three, two, one…” and pulled the door open. It swung smoothly past ninety degrees and the two cops were already inside. Then Carson was inside and Ranya followed.
****
Ranya pulled the door closed behind her with her trailing left hand as the room flashed with brilliant white lights. Part of her job was to shut it so that as much sound as possible would be contained inside the building, in order to not alert those in the motor home two-hundred yards away, or any other enemies lurking unseen in the hangars or even in building two.
As soon as she closed the door, she grabbed the already running and recording camcorder with her left hand and swung it up against her left shoulder; she just kept it pointed wherever she was looking. In her right hand was Carson’s silent Colt Woodsman .22 pistol, held slightly out in front of her. As she came through the door, she pushed on the tactical light’s pressure button with her thumb.
The surprise room invasion and the appearance of four extremely intense lights stunned and blinded two men twenty feet across the room. They were crouched and looking away, grimacing and covering their faces with their free hands. Between them on the ground was a third person, who the two men had been dragging across the floor by his arms.
“Real funny, you assholes!” said one of the two men. “Okay, you got us, now kill the lights!”
The centers of the four beams stayed on their contorted faces. The tactical lights were as painful to look toward as arc-welders. Their shifting silhouettes threw giant overlapping shadows against the opposite walls.
Carson yelled, “Get on the floor! Get on the floor!”
“Up yours, asshole! Is that you, Jaeger? I’m gonna kick your Hollywood ass! What happened with Swarovski, nobody home?”
“Get on the floor you freakin’ morons! Get down now!” Carson bellowed again.
The man who was talking was shielding his face with his right forearm, trying to block the lights and see who was standing behind them. “Did Bullard put you up to this? Okay, you win; you got us, very funny. Now kill the Goddamn lights!”
The two men were crouching on either side of the man they had been pulling across the floor. Ranya continued to record the scene, the camcorder resting against her left shoulder, and the light under her pistol’s suppressor was trained on the bigger of the two guys, the one who was talking. She noticed that one of his knees had an orthopedic brace strapped around it over his pants. Both men wore dark rain jackets or windbreakers, but she could see a holstered pistol on the hip of the big one with the knee brace, where his open jacket was pushed back to the side.
“Get on the floor! Get down on your faces, now!” Carson yelled again. The blond man with the crew-cut was now on both knees, trying to shield his eyes with his hands and look at his tormenters, but he was being defeated in this attempt by the sheer intensity of the light being directed onto his face.
The other man, the heavier one with the loud mouth, was almost on his hands and knees. He seemed to pause in a football lineman’s stance, unsure if he was going to lie down or get up. Then he kicked off hard with one leg and charged across the room, his clenched fists out in front, evidently striving to tackle one of the “pranksters” who were humiliating him with their practical joke.
The two off-duty policemen, spread well apart on either side of the door, didn’t see this charging bull holding a weapon or reaching for a gun. His hands were out front in plain sight, so they held their fire.
Phil Carson, who was in the center of the four room invaders and the closest to the door, became the immediate object of the raging bull’s wrath as he lurched across the twenty feet of space. But Carson did not have the cop’s ingrained fire discipline, and he certainly had no wish to be smashed against a wall by an onrushing 250-pounder. He dropped the brilliant center of his light’s beam to the center of the man’s chest and squeezed the trigger of his Thompson once.
Inside the room, it sounded as if a heavy textbook had been slammed down onto the cement floor. The sound of a quick pair of shots from Ranya’s .22 pistol was swallowed up entirely by the Thompson’s bark and reverberations.
Carson’s .45 caliber slug slammed into Garfield’s massive chest, cut through his sternum, ripped through his beating heart, and came to rest embedded in the center of his spinal column. Ranya’s .22 caliber bullets punched two neat holes above the bridge of his nose, tumbled sideways and carved intersecting paths through his brain, then stopped against the back of his skull.
Clay Garfield was dead before he hit the floor, crumpling onto his side almost at Carson’s feet with a thud.
The blond crew-cut man took this as his cue to drop face down spread eagle on the floor.
Carson’s Thompson was aimed at the dead man’s head. He was ready to apply a coup de grace if one was required, as he rolled him over onto his back with a push from his boot. Garfield’s wide-open eyes were already flat and dead. He was only bleeding slightly from the tiny wounds above his nose. Because Carson’s shot had destroyed the man’s heart in mid-beat, it couldn’t pump any blood out of his body, and the little bit that he did bleed from his chest wound was contained inside his rain slicker.
Without being instructed, Santander was already kneeling behind the prone blond man. He swept the pistol from his holster and slid it across the floor out of reach, and pulled his arms behind him and handcuffed them. Then he swiftly and efficiently divested this new prisoner of his cell phone, wallet and car keys. With the man secured, he used his own key to uncuff the unconscious older man, who the two goons had been dragging across the floor when the rescue team had burst into the room.
“Hey Fred, is that guy breathing?” asked Phil Carson.
Santander checked the man’s pulse on his throat; he hadn’
t moved during the entire sequence. “He’s alive.”
“You know who you’ve got there?” asked Jasper Mosby, “Burgess Edmonds, the famous militia leader.”
Ranya meanwhile dashed across the room to the workbench; she put down her .22 pistol and pulled off the cloth sack covering Brad’s head. He tentatively opened his eyes, blinking at her face.
“Oh Brad, thank God you’re alive, thank God you’re alive! I’ll cut you loose in a second.”
She let go of his face and pulled her folding pocket knife from her pants pocket, flicked open the blade, and then carefully sliced through the nylon ropes tying him to the door. He had livid red welts around his neck and wrists where he had been tied down. After, as he was freed, he slowly rolled onto his side in the fetal position. He was barefoot and dressed only in the khaki shorts which he had been arrested in. Ranya leaned over him, holding him and kissing his face and neck.
Carson asked, “Brad, can you sit up? Can you walk?”
He struggled to form words. “I…d-don’t know… I’ll try.”
The two cops returned to the front room, supporting another freed prisoner between them. “This guy’s name is Vic Sorrento. They grabbed him last night and kept him in a gym locker,” said Santander. “There’s nobody else back there.”
“Okay, we’ve got Fallon, we’ve got Edmonds, and this new guy. Just give me a few seconds, let me think…” Carson pulled out his walkie-talkie and pressed the transmit button. “Hey Archie, we’re about done in Bubba’s place. Everything’s fine here. How’s it look outside? Nothing? Okay. Stay ready. We’re taking both vehicles, so that’ll be us leaving.”
Brad was sitting up on the edge of the work table now, and then he stood up with Ranya’s help. Santander had found his blue shirt and boat shoes, and Ranya helped him to put them on. “Thanks for coming, I really…” He began to weep, but he fought it back. “Listen, I heard what they're going to do tonight. They're going to put Edmonds into a car and push it in a lake. Tomorrow they were going to kill me.”
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