“So what?”
“You wrote it?” she asked.
“What if I did?”
“Why?”
“It was my job. My old job.”
“I checked into your new job. You run your own militia.”
West snorted. “We’re not a militia. We’re freedom fighters.”
“Who are you fighting for freedom from?”
“If you have to ask you wouldn’t understand the answer.”
Reel frowned. “The big bad government? You live in the middle of nowhere. You have your guns. You’ve got your own place. You’re off the grid. No one’s bothering you that I can see. So what’s the problem?”
“It’s only a matter of time before they come for us. And believe me, we’ll be ready.”
“You know what your paper said. Do you believe it?”
“Of course.”
“You think it could actually happen?” she asked.
“I know it could. Because we’re so lackadaisical about security. Only they didn’t have the balls in D.C. to admit that. It seemed to me that the higher-ups wanted the assholes to attack us. One of the reasons I quit. I was disgusted.”
“So you think this is the path to a peaceful future?”
“I never said a peaceful future was the goal. Our having a future is the goal. You lead by force. You kick the shit out of them. You don’t just sit around and wait for them to attack you. Clusters of powder, we called them. They think security is impenetrable. Well, my paper showed them how impenetrable it was. It was bullshit.”
“So you were tasked to do doomsday scenarios?” asked Reel.
“We had a whole office doing nothing but. Most of the others did the same old crap. Nothing outside the box. They were worried about ruffling feathers. Not me. You give me a job, I do it. I don’t give a shit about consequences.”
“Who did you submit the white paper to?”
“That’s classified,” retorted West.
“You’re not with the government anymore,” countered Reel.
“Still classified.”
“I thought the government was the enemy.”
“Right now, you’re the enemy. And if you think you’re going to get away from here alive, you’re beyond stupid.”
“You the law out here? You and your freedom fighters?”
“Pretty much. Why do you think I moved here?”
“Who did you submit it to?” she asked again.
“What are you going to do, torture me?” he sneered.
“I don’t have time to torture you. Although you would find it memorable. If you don’t tell me I’ll just shoot you.”
“In cold blood,” he scoffed. “You’re a woman.”
“That should tell you all you need to know to be afraid.”
West laughed. “You think a lot of your gender, don’t you?”
“You were a desk jockey your whole career. You never fired a shot and never had a shot fired at you. The closest you ever got to danger was watching the video feed from a thousand miles away. Did that make you feel like a real man instead of the ball-less punk you really are?”
He started to jump up, but Reel placed a round an inch from his right ear, so close that bits of the hard dirt kicked up and struck his ear, which started bleeding.
He screamed, “You stupid bitch, you shot me!”
“Dirt, not metal. You’d feel the difference. Now spread your legs wider.”
“What?”
“Spread your legs wider.”
“Why?”
“Do it or I promise dirt will not be the next thing you feel.”
West spread his legs wider.
Reel moved behind him and lined up her shot with her Glock.
“What the hell are you doing?” he cried out, panicked.
“Which testicle do you want to keep? But I have to tell you, at this angle, there’s no guarantee I won’t nail both of them with the one shot.”
He immediately snapped his legs together.
“Then you’ll get it right up the ass,” she said. “I don’t think it’ll feel any better.”
“Why the hell are you doing this?” he screamed.
“It’s pretty simple. I asked for a name. You didn’t give me one.”
“I didn’t officially submit it to anyone.”
“Unofficially, then,” said Reel.
“What does it matter?”
“Because it seems that some folks took you at your word and are going to try to do it.”
“Really?”
“Don’t sound so happy. It’s insane. Now the name. I won’t ask again.”
“It was only a code name,” said West.
“Bullshit.”
“I swear to God.”
“Why submit unofficially to a code name? And your answer better make sense or you’re going to need a new way to evacuate your bowels.”
“The person came to me.”
“What person?” she asked.
“I meant electronically they came to me. They somehow found out I had written a comprehensive, groundbreaking scenario. It was vindication.”
It disgusted Reel to see how animated he suddenly was in talking about his “accomplishments.”
“When did this happen?”
“About two years ago.” He added, “Are they really doing it? I mean who?”
“What was the code name?”
He didn’t answer.
“You have one second. Now!”
“Roger the Dodger,” he shouted.
“And why submit to Roger the Dodger?” she asked calmly, keeping her finger on the Glock’s trigger guard.
“His electronic signature showed he had top-top-secret clearance and was at least three levels above me. He wanted to know what I had come up with. He said the scuttlebutt was my plan was revolutionary.”
“How would he have known that if you hadn’t even submitted it to anyone yet?”
The man hesitated and said sheepishly, “Maybe I talked a bit about it at the bar we would go to for drinks after work.”
“No wonder the government kicked your ass out. You’re an idiot.”
“I would have quit anyway,” he snapped.
“Right. To come to a little cabin in the middle of this craphole.”
“This is real America, bitch!”
“Your doomsday paper was pretty specific.”
He said proudly, “Country by country, leader by leader, step by step. It was all in the timing. It was a perfect jigsaw puzzle. I spent two years figuring it out. Every contingency. Everything that could go wrong. Everything was accounted for.”
“Not everything.”
“That’s impossible,” he snapped.
“You didn’t account for me.”
Reel heard the noises before he did. But when he did he smiled.
“Your time is up, little lady.”
“I’m not little. And I’ve never been a lady.”
Her boot came down on the back of his head, bouncing it off the hard dirt and knocking him out cold. She grabbed the pages and stuffed them back into her duster.
Reel retraced West’s safe path to the cabin and gave it the quick once-over. There were stacks of weapons, ammo, grenades, packs of C-4, Semtex, and other plastic explosives. Through a window looking out on the back porch she saw fifty-gallon drums of what looked to be gasoline and maybe fertilizer. She doubted they were for the generator or to grow crops. She figured the barn was probably full of those containers as well.
She also glimpsed detailed plans of attack on major cities in the United States. These folks were domestic terrorists of the worst kind. She grabbed anything that looked like it might be important, including a USB stick plugged into his laptop, and stuffed them in her coat pockets.
She also snagged a couple grenades. A “lady” could never have too many grenades.
She ran back out, raced over to his Jeep, threw open the rear door, and pulled out the scoped rifle and a box of ammo in the cargo pa
d.
She hustled back to her Explorer, jumped in, and peeled out. But before she got to the main road, she realized it was too late. When she saw what was coming at her, she had no option other than turning around and heading back toward the cabin.
It looked like a few precious seconds were going to end up costing Reel her life.
Chapter 41
Reel pushed the gas pedal to the floor and the Explorer roared up the twisting gravel drive. In her mind she was planning her attack. When outnumbered, retreat wasn’t always an option. Superior forces rarely expected an outgunned opponent to charge at them.
Reel wasn’t going to exactly do that. She was going for a modified version of an all-out assault.
She checked the rearview mirror and gauged the distance between her and the massive Denali chasing her. It was full of what she presumed were wackos posing as freedom fighters, and she presumed they were all heavily armed.
Well, she would find out exactly how heavily armed they were in a few seconds. And how well they handled their weapons. She just hoped the feint she was planning worked.
She gained the separation she needed, lowered the window halfway, and skidded the Ford to a stop, leaving it blocking the road. She grabbed the rifle, rested the barrel on top of the half-lowered window, took aim, and shot out the front tires on the Denali. For good measure she put a round through the front grille. Steam started to pour out and the Denali ground to a halt.
The doors opened and men jumped out gripping a variety of weapons.
Pistols and subguns did not concern her. They didn’t have the range to hurt her.
They opened fire but nothing came close to her.
She shot three times and three of the shooters fell, all with nonfatal wounds, which was intentional on her part. She just wanted them out of the action. And there was a sense of fairness as well. She didn’t have to kill them and so she let them live but in no condition to fight.
She shifted her attention to another man who jumped out on the left side of the Denali. He was holding a scoped rifle.
That could reach her. So Reel put him down with one shot to the forehead. He fell backward and the rifle spun out of his dead hands. No one went to retrieve it.
The men, probably wondering what the hell they had gotten themselves into, retreated to the back of the Denali, using the big vehicle as a shield.
But through her scope Reel could see some of them pulling cell phones out.
They were calling in reinforcements.
Ironically, that was what she wanted. It would give her the time to proceed with part two of her plan. She gunned the engine and headed toward the cabin.
A few moments later she skidded to a stop a good distance from the cabin behind a stand of trees and leapt out. She pulled the grenades from her pocket, ran toward the cabin, pulled the pins, and threw the grenades through the structure’s front window.
She was turning back to run to the Explorer when Roy West plowed into her.
Reel managed to keep her feet, but he had one hand wrapped around her throat. He assumed that with his superior size and strength the battle was over.
West could not have been more wrong.
Reel twisted her body to the left, breaking his grip around her throat. At the same time she brought her knee up between his legs, with devastating results. West’s face turned purple, his knees buckled, and he grabbed his crotch. She slammed her right elbow into his left temple. He screamed, gasped, and started to fall away from her. But his foot accidentally hooked her leg and Reel fell too, him on top of her.
Before they hit the dirt the grenades detonated. And so did every other explosive and flammable material in the cabin. The roof blew twenty feet in the air and pieces of wood, metal, and glass became deadly shrapnel flying out in all directions at supersonic speed.
Reel felt the impact of some of this debris collide with West’s thick body. Hundreds of dull thuds, actually. His face turned white, then gray, and then blood started to pour from his mouth and nose.
Ironically, he had become her shield.
Reel rolled to her right, throwing the now dead man off her. She staggered up and looked at the flames and thick plumes of dark smoke rising up into the sky. She looked down at her clothes. The duster was shredded and covered in West’s blood. Reel had not escaped unscathed either. She had cuts on her face and hands, and there was a dull pain in her right leg from where West had fallen on her. But she was alive.
She looked at the barn. The flames would reach that structure very soon. She didn’t want to be around to witness or feel that flame ball.
She jumped into the Ford, backed up, and gunned it.
She heard vehicles racing up the road. The reinforcements had come. And with the explosion they would concentrate all their attention on the cabin.
That had been her intent when she had blown it up.
She knew exactly where she was headed next. When you built a cabin in the middle of nowhere and filled it with explosives and plans of mass destruction, you would never be content with simply one road in and out. If the authorities came, you had to have another form of escape.
And Reel, who had been looking for just such a route, had spied it on the way in when she had done her recon.
A logging road to the east. That was her exit. Unfortunately, two vehicles were blocking her path out. Along with a dozen men with enough firepower to tangle on equal footing with a fully equipped Army squad. They had outflanked her.
So this was it.
Chapter 42
Reel sat in the Ford and stared down at the men. They were arrayed in two defensive positions that could quickly be modified to offensive scenarios. They were dressed in makeshift uniforms, cammie pants, muscle shirts. Most were large, with fatty, bench-press-swollen chests and shoulders and bulging guts.
They were pointing sniper rifles, shotguns, pistols, and MP5s at her. When they opened fire, which they looked prepared to do right now, the first volley would wipe her out.
This was not how Reel imagined dying. Not at the hands of jerks who looked like they were barely one evolutionary step removed from cavemen.
In the distance there was an explosion. That must have been the barn going up, she thought. She fingered her pistol. She could hit the gas and make a run at them, but the odds of her breaking through the blockade were not good. A quick calculation in her head put her survival rate at less than five percent.
Then she heard vehicles moving in behind her. She glanced at the rearview mirror and saw two more trucks and ten more militiamen slide in less than a hundred yards behind her.
Now she was outgunned and outflanked.
My survival rate just dropped to zero.
She pulled her gun and stepped from the truck. She had decided she was not going down without a fight. They would never be able to say that about her.
The men took careful aim and their fingers went to their triggers. They would have her dead center in a lethal field of fire.
She gave a small shake of the head, and even managed a smile.
“Finito,” she whispered to herself.
“Go to hell!” she shouted at the militiamen as she raised her gun for what would certainly be the last time.
That’s when the first explosion hit.
Caught off guard, Reel instinctively ducked and rolled under the truck. Her first thought was that one of the idiot militia guys had dropped a grenade and blown himself up.
When she looked back it seemed that this was indeed the case. The trucks on her forward flank were on fire, the men there dead, dazed, or scattered.
But then from the corner of her eye she saw a shot originate from a ridge to her left. It impacted with the side of one of the trucks on her rear flank. Its fuel tank ignited and lifted the two-ton truck three feet into the air, scattering lethal bits of metal in all directions.
Six of the men there were gutted where they stood and dropped, never to fight again. Then the gunfire opened up. But they weren’t fir
ing at her. They were firing up at the ridge.
Reel looked out from under the truck. The sunlight was in her eyes, but she slid a bit to the right and the glare vanished. She grabbed her binoculars from her pocket, clapped them to her eyes, and spun the focus lever.
She saw the muzzle of a sniper rifle. And not just any sniper rifle. She had one just like it. A customized job that only had a few patrons.
The gun fired once, twice, three times.
Reel looked back and saw three men drop to the dirt, dead.
She stared back up the ridge. The man was moving so fast and so low to the ground that he resembled a cougar going after prey.
Her jaw sagged. It was Will Robie.
She marveled at his ability to maneuver so fluidly through the rough terrain. Then she wondered why he was giving up the high ground.
She stopped wondering with what he did next.
He fired a round into the fuel tank of the second truck on her rear flank. He’d had to move to get a sight line on the tank. He must have been chambering incendiary rounds, because this truck exploded too. Three more men died and the survivors ran for it, disappearing down the road in full retreat.
Robie stopped, pivoted, and then rapid-fired with his sniper rifle at the remaining men on the forward flank.
Acquire a target and fire. Acquire a target and fire. It was like taking breaths, as natural and seamless as could be. Reel counted off each shot and with each round fired, a man fell. Robie never once missed. It was a man against children.
They took cover and fired back. But even though he was outgunned it was like Robie had the superior firepower. While the militia shot wildly, their adrenaline and fear making it unlikely they would hit anything, Robie aimed and fired with such calm efficiency that it was like he was playing a video game and could hit reset anytime he wanted.
After another minute of this slaughter the remaining militia on the forward flank were in full-scale retreat.
That left just the two of them.
Reel looked back at Robie. He stood on a small knoll staring down at her.
She came out from under the truck and held her pistol loosely at her side.
He had dropped his rifle. His Glock was in his right hand. He held it loosely too.
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