by Hunt, Jack
“Seems men have a way of walking out on me,” she said, her lip curling up. “Miles, how can we do this? It just seems impossible. Six against God knows how many.”
Miles leaned against the wall and gently pulled back the drapes to get a look outside. The street was quiet. The explosions on the east side had ended hours ago. He hoped none of Maddox’s people were dead but the reality was they probably were.
“I said the same to Gunnar the first time I went up against eight,” he replied without looking at her.
“And what did he say?”
“Oh you know, we don’t know until we try.”
“That’s reassuring.”
“That’s what I said.” He looked at her and smiled. At that moment, she leaned in and kissed him on the lips. For a brief moment, he let it happen, maybe because he wanted it to happen, he wanted her the way he had when he was younger. But then Gunnar came to mind, and the way he felt when he saw Arianna with Demar. He didn’t want to be that one, that guy who took someone else from another. Miles turned his face away and stepped back. Immediately Scarlett apologized.
“I’m… sorry. I…” she began to say.
“It’s fine. I…” He inhaled and released the breath. “I should go and check if Redford got hold of Tex.” He turned and quickly headed out before the situation got any more uncomfortable. As he made his way downstairs he rolled his lips in and tasted her Chapstick. It wasn’t that he didn’t want her. It was because he wanted her that he left. She belonged to another and as long as that was the case he couldn’t go there, in his mind or in body. He pushed her from his thoughts.
Outside, they had managed to get through to Tex. Snow was speaking with him as he came out of the house. “Here he is, hold on,” Snow said, handing him the mic.
“Tex.”
“That’ll be me. So, Miles, I hear you want to be as brave as the first man who ate an oyster. That right?”
Miles chuckled.
“Something like that.”
“Tell me you’ve got a plan, kid.”
“Still working on it. What’s the SITREP for the eastern side?”
“Zero loss of life. Our boys lit them up like a Roman candle. You should have seen them run. It was as crazy as a Larrabee’s calf.”
“You think you can land your bird on the Hilton Convention Center?”
“Why? You ruled out the Titanic? Damn it! I was hoping to give you my rendition of ‘My Heart Will Go On’ as my bird soared away with you all.”
Miles’ brow furrowed and he replied slowly. “Yeah. Okay. Well, you might have to put a pin in that one for now. Look, can you or not?”
“Son, I can land this bird on an upright pinhead in a hurricane but whether or not I would be stupid enough to try it is another thing entirely.”
“So that’s a no?”
He burst out laughing. “Kid, that’s a big fat yes from me. I love to ride the wagon with the wheels off. And let’s face it, you can’t get lard unless you boil a hog.” Miles shook his head. That confused the hell out of him but he was starting to get used to his strange way of speaking.
Slightly caught off guard by his bizarre conversation, he brought it to a close. “Okay well, I’ll get back to you in five with an update on when and how and… yeah, we’ll speak soon.”
“Sure ’nuff. Roger that.”
He handed back the mic to Redford.
“So, how do you want to do this?” Snow asked.
Miles paced, biting down on his lip. As he walked back and forth, chewing it over, he looked at Lucius who was staring at the cigarette in his hand like it was some foreign object. Then it came to him as clear as day.
“Lucius. How did you enjoy pretending to be me last time?”
“Pretending? I made you look good.”
“Want to do it again?”
“Sure….” The word shot out of his mouth, his ego way ahead of his common sense, then he stopped, frowned and his eyes bounced to Snow. Immediately he began to protest. “Oh, hell no. Any other day, I would gladly walk in your shoes but if you’re thinking of what I think you are, no way. You’re not sending me in like a lamb to the slaughter so you guys can slip in unnoticed.”
“Actually I wasn’t thinking that. You’d be going in the opposite direction. Think of it more like a…” Miles clicked his fingers as a smirk formed. “A wild goose chase.”
“Where the goose is me, right?”
“Oh I knew you were smart,” Miles said.
Lucius wagged a finger. “No. N. O. That’s a big no from me.”
Miles threw up a hand. “All right, I guess I’ll just have to bask in the glory all by myself when we get home. I mean, I know my feats so far have already reached epic level, but I guess I can add one more to the mix,” he said in a sarcastic manner as he turned away. If there was one thing he knew about Lucius it was that he lived for the applause. Some people did. In his case right now, the audience was himself and he wanted more. This would get him more. A daring act like this wouldn’t go unnoticed. It would have likely garnered him some kind of medal of honor had they been in the military.
The truth was he was about to take a page out of the handbook of what had worked back in Camdenton. “I’ll do it but on two conditions.”
Miles whirled around. “Name it.”
“One, you make it known to the group when we return that I, me, not any of these amateurs was responsible for the rescue of the first lady and her daughter, and second, Tex has to pick me up on the Titanic.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do the second. Tex would be bringing us to safety.”
He leaned forward. “Then get me another helicopter. As there is no damn way I’m leading those suckers on a wild goose chase around this town if I don’t have an exit strategy. I’m not being left behind. I know what you’re trying to do.” He stood up and squared off to Miles. “You’re trying to send them after me while you all slip out the back door. Not on my watch, sucker!”
He was in his face, stabbing his pudgy finger against Miles’ chest.
“All right.”
There were three helicopters, they’d need the second for an air attack to cover Tex as he came in. Just thinking about it all was enough to make him want to bail but they had to try. They hadn’t come this far for nothing.
“But what about the timing? We don’t even know if that will be enough,” Snow said.
“Oh, it’ll be enough. It will have to be. Besides, I have one more thing up my sleeve.”
“You are just full of tricks, aren’t you?” Snow said.
“What can I say, I like to wow the crowd.” Miles smiled as Redford got Tex back on the line and he updated him on the situation.
“So… does it all make sense Tex?”
He waited, but there was nothing but dead air.
“Tex?”
“Yeah, I mean, I hear you clucking, but I can’t find your nest.”
“What?” Miles asked, shaking his head.
Snow rolled his eyes and leaned in. “It means you’re batshit crazy,” Snow explained. “Speak English, Tex,” he shouted.
“I am,” Tex replied. “It’s not my fault if he’s got a big hole in his screen door.”
More than ten minutes later they were on the way, heading east for the convention center. They had to make a few pit stops to gather what they needed but that was the easy part. Jokes aside, an expression of seriousness masked all of their faces, they all knew this could be it. If it was, it was one hell of a way to go out, one for the history books, one that would probably find its way alongside some of the great tales of the Midwest.
A little after nine, they arrived at the edge of a forest before the world around them turned to concrete, glass, and a threat more deadly than anything they’d gone up against before.
22
Gunnar
They were laying on their bellies as Gunnar adjusted the focus on the binoculars to get a better look. They were northeast of Eugene, ten minutes out of the small town
that had less than two thousand people. “Are you sure about this?”
“Yeah, he owes me,” Gunnar said.
“No, I mean can he be trusted?”
“You worry too much.”
“And you don’t worry enough,” Arianna said. “You saw what happened back there.”
“Relax. That’s why I’m observing.”
He looked again. It looked peaceful. He saw teens, and several adults strolling the grounds. A few were working in a patch of land, pulling up vegetables. He didn’t expect anything less. Rick wasn’t the kind of guy who would have willingly walked into a town and let the PLA dictate his life. He was a hard-nosed Marine vet who had commanded forces in Iraq.
Rick “Mad Dog” Mcgiven, as he was called by those who knew him, ran a boot camp for troubled teens before the war broke out. It was a treatment facility that helped transform adolescents with wayward behavior by putting them in a wilderness experience. It was meant to teach them accountability, and allow them a way to self-reflect, adjust their outlook, and repair their relationships. It worked. Though it had come under fire in the years prior to the war for Mad Dog’s heavy-handed methods. Some of which had led to the near-death of one boy — a boy who’d complained about stomach problems. Although Rick thought he was just whining to get out of the long hikes, it turned out his appendix burst and he had to be rushed off to a hospital. Had he arrived an hour later he might not have made it. The parents filed a civil lawsuit and won, took him for a lot of money. Almost got his entire business closed down. But stopping a man like Mad Dog from continuing would have been like saying America couldn’t win this war. His refusal to quit and roll over and lick his wounds was what made up the spine of this country.
At one point in time, Gunnar had been invited to come in and teach them survival skills and take over while Mad Dog took an overdue vacation. He never got paid for it. It was a favor; one which he’d told him he’d collect on someday.
Today was that day.
“Why hasn’t he been hauled in? Most have,” Arianna asked.
“Maybe they haven’t gotten to him yet.”
“Or maybe…” Arianna said.
He was quick to dismiss that. “Hell no! Mad Dog is a patriot through and through. He would rather stand in front of a firing squad than bend the knee to these assholes. Come on, let’s go,” he said, looking both ways before they made their way down to his ranch just off Settle Lane. It was a beautiful place that Rick had built himself. He was much like Gunnar in that regard. Self-sufficiency, living off the land, building his home on a plot of land was something they had in common. The huge lodge butted up against a large pond. Instead of creating cabins for the teens to live in, he liked to have them all under one roof, somewhere he could keep a close eye on them. Him, and his staff of three. There was an old country fence that surrounded his property, and a large wrought iron gate at the main entrance to the farm.
As they got closer, a woman hanging washing out on a line saw them approach and darted into the lodge. A few moments later, Mad Dog emerged, looking every bit as grizzled as he did when Gunnar had taken orders from him. He eyed him with a stern look, however, it could have been because his eyesight was failing him.
Mad Dog was short in stature but a hulk of a man. He looked as if he’d been stitched into the clothes he wore. He was wearing a camel-colored safari hat, a dark jean shirt, and cream-colored shorts that stopped just above his knees. He also had on brown sandals. He was the kind of man whose calves looked bigger than most guys’ biceps. His tanned face was hidden behind a graying beard.
“I had a feeling one day I would see you again,” Rick said.
“Coming to collect.”
“Figured as much.” He clasped Gunnar’s hand and pulled him in for a strong bear hug. “How are you, old friend?”
“The better for seeing you.”
Rick pulled back and looked him up and down then eyed Arianna. “Arianna. Still as lovely as ever.” He slid past Gunnar and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “And who do we have here?” He finished by admiring Brooke.
She introduced herself and he shook her hand like a gentleman.
“Come on in.”
Several teens were standing by the doorway, a few more sitting on the steps. “After all this time and you still have them here?”
“And many others,” he said leading them into the cabin-like lodge. It was huge inside: cathedral ceilings, floor to ceiling windows, and a massive fireplace at the center.
“Looks like you have fared well.” Inside he counted roughly fourteen people and that didn’t include the teens that kept appearing from different hallways that fissured off into the mansion-sized cabin.
“You could say we’ve managed to stay ahead of the curve.”
“And the PLA?” Gunnar asked.
He glanced at him and looked amused by the question. “We’ve seen them. They came by. We were told we had thirty days to pack up our things and head into town.”
“When was that?”
“Thirty-eight days ago.”
Gunnar chuckled. “So what did you tell them?”
“I think you know.” He roared with laughter. “Listen, make yourself comfortable. I have a few errands to run but then I want to hear what’s new, what’s happened with yourself. I’ve heard a few rumors through the grapevine that are titillating. I want to hear it all.”
23
Masked up, Lucius looked every bit like Miles. It wasn’t just the bandanna pulled up around his face and nose, but it was his stature, his build, eyes, and hair color. It was only when he opened his trap that anyone could tell.
They’d commandeered a vehicle, in the sense they’d stuck a gun in a PLA soldier’s face and blown his brains out the back of his skull. In addition to that, they’d acquired four collaborator uniforms, two from the dead guys sitting outside Raj’s residence and two more from those they’d managed to lure back to his place under the premise that Raj needed them.
While their faces weren’t disguised, no one really knew them. Snow, Redford, Scarlett, and Barrett hadn’t been this far south in years. They knew there was a chance they’d be checked for ID, so in order to pull off what Miles had in mind, he planned on being cuffed and escorted into the convention center under the premise they’d caught him.
It was a means of creating confusion, the way a magician might do one thing with one hand while he did another with the other. Getting ID from the four of them would be the furthest thing from their minds once they knew they had the Hunter.
Of course, Lucius would draw them away first.
Masked and hidden inside a vehicle, the hope was he would lure out a large number of collaborators and PLA in a chase that would end on the west side outside the Titanic museum, ten minutes away.
From there, Lucius would be extracted to safety.
In addition to this, militia inside the third helicopter would attack, throwing even more confusion into the mix.
Drawn away in pursuit of the would-be Hunter, distracted by another eastern attack, that’s where the rest of them would come into play. Once out of sight, and given enough time, Miles would emerge under the supervision of four collaborators, giving the illusion that they had captured him.
All they needed to do was get inside and he figured that would give them entry without issue. Once in, they would handle it from there.
“Is that all clear?” he asked, running it by them again as they waited in the tree line.
“You better make sure my ride arrives or I’m screwed,” Lucius said before he took off to where he’d parked the military truck.
“It’ll be there, just make sure you are,” Miles replied shaking his head.
Lucius gave him the bird before disappearing around a bend.
He didn’t even want to imagine what would happen if this went wrong. In some ways he kind of felt bad using him like a mechanical hare in a greyhound race but he kept touting how he was up for the challenge, capable of doing whatever Miles co
uld, this was his moment to prove it.
Miles exhaled hard, allowing his body to relax. Snow placed a hand on his shoulder. “It will be fine, my friend.”
“I’m glad to see you have confidence. Tell me something about your tribe. I imagine they believe in the afterlife, right? That we are all part of some great circle and are given another shot?”
Snow looked at him with a contemplative expression as if he was about to drop something that would blow his mind. Instead, he replied, “Actually, no we don’t have any belief in the afterlife, usually the dead are tossed in a hole and left open for the hyenas to eat, and then our tribe would up and move.”
Miles crouched; his eyebrows raised. “Okay. So what you’re saying is we are up shit creek without a paddle.”
Snow let out a deep laugh as he slapped him on the back. “Maybe now you understand, my friend, why I embraced Western religion. Either way, if we die today, it will be a good death.”
Miles stared at the two scars on either side of his face. He hadn’t mentioned them before but as they waited for Lucius to make his move, and with death looming over them, he asked to satisfy his curiosity. “The scars on your face, are they a form of identification?”
“It was meant to curb crying. Tears make cuts sting.”
He nodded and said no more. He didn’t probe any further and Snow didn’t look as if he wanted to expand upon it.
Wheels squealed in the distance followed by loud gunfire and they knew the chase had begun. While they’d given Lucius instructions on what roads to take, based on what Maddox knew about the city, Miles figured he wouldn’t abide by them. He was the kind of guy that walked to the beat of his own tune.
Waiting, they spotted the truck roar past, disappearing out of view with military Humvees in hot pursuit. Redford got on the radio and gave them the go-ahead to attack from the east. They heard the thump of a helicopter rotor in the distance and then a series of explosions.
“That’s our cue.” Miles rose up, his hand partially locked by cuffs. Of course, they wouldn’t fully close as he needed to get out of them fast to reach the two Glocks in the back of his pants, concealed by his jacket. Snow led the way, while the other three surrounded him on all sides. They hurried north down Sycamore Street, passing by residents, and even a few collaborators. None of them stopped or questioned them. There was too much happening. Voices bellowing over radios. Explosions occurring in rapid succession outside and inside the eastern quadrant.