by Nathan Jones
It was a fair enough request, especially since Tom would want to stop by those groups anyway to see if they'd seen Skyler. “I'll do that.” He turned towards the door back into the command building. “Good luck here, Sheriff.”
“We'll need it.” Gray turned without another word and walked down the street in the direction Jonas had gone.
Tom collected a few messages from Betty, as well as the locations of the defender teams and scouts he'd be seeking out. He refused to take any that took him too far off his path, unwilling to slow his search; he might be resigned to going back out, in spite of the risk to his family in the valley, but he wanted to be back as soon as possible.
If nothing else, he might need Skyler's help to defend Kristy, Molly, and the baby as they fled Camptown.
His wife was seated at the outdoor table with Molly when he got back to the retreat, a covered plate of food waiting for him alongside their own empty plates, cleared of even crumbs. She hopped up the moment she spotted him, eyes crinkled in concern.
“Last we know, Skyler was a couple days northeast of here,” he said as he settled down at the table in front of his plate. “I have the location.”
Her breath left her in a huge whoosh, and she sagged down on the bench beside him, leaning against his side as he pulled the cloth away. True to her promise, she'd cooked a steak, if a small one, and had arranged it beside some sauteed vegetables and another thick slice of bread with butter.
“So you'll be heading out in the morning?” she asked quietly as he began shoving food in his mouth, barely tasting it.
He shook his head. “Soon as I finish eating,” he mumbled around a mouthful. “I don't want to let him get too far ahead.”
“Good.” Kristy was silent for a moment, hands resting protectively over her belly, a look of fear and anguish on her features. “I was afraid you'd insist on staying.”
The way she said it, it was obvious she half wished he would. He knew how desperately she needed him here, even if she insisted she could handle things.
Tom set down his knife and fork for a second and turned to her, meeting her eyes. “I'll go out again,” he said heavily. “I hate to leave you here, but I can't ignore this opportunity to catch up to Skyler.” He lowered his voice in a tone that brooked no argument. “But you and Molly are going to be ready to evacuate at the first sign of trouble. Fiona and baby Thomas too, if you can strong arm them into going with you. I don't care if you have to ditch the other evacuees while they're getting their act together, you take the horses and as much food as you can carry and you head southwest, where you should have the least chance of running into trouble.”
Kristy leaned her head against his shoulder. “I will,” she said fiercely. “Don't you worry about us, Tom. You just focus on finding our son.”
He gave an exhausted laugh. “I worry for you and our children twenty-four seven, Kris. But I trust you'll stay on top of things here, even should the unthinkable happen.” He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tight.
She hugged him back, so hard her arms trembled. That hint of the fear and desperation she must be feeling was almost enough to make him change his mind and refuse to leave her alone. But in spite of his deep misgivings, he'd already committed.
Drat that boy. However noble Skyler's intentions, he really did deserve to get dragged behind the woodshed and given a solid hiding, like Mer had suggested. If he had any notion of what his running off like this was doing to his mother, and at the worst possible time . . .
It was selfishness, pure and simple.
Chapter Ten
Jailbreak
Brandon's volunteers all knew their places the fourth night after dropping the cliff on Highway 29. They'd spent the days planning and preparing, and waiting until Sangue settled down a bit and got into the routine of clearing the blocked road.
Now was the time, if ever.
The bloodies had come with a vengeance, close to two hundred slaves working on clearing the road from both ends, complete with heavy machinery to help with the hauling, and over a hundred soldiers to guard them and patrol the area. From how seriously they'd dug in, it was looking like hitting Emery all over again.
Except instead of an army comprising of all of Camptown's and Grand Junction's fighters, Brandon had a dozen people and a bunch of pistols and shotguns to arm emaciated slaves who could barely stand after a brutal day's work. Who he was hoping would have the strength to fight their way free, then flee the inevitable pursuit and get back to the valley without leaving a trail.
Was he insane?
Well, insane or not it was time to go. He finished making his rounds to check everyone's preparations and get their status, then gathered them all to him. “You all ready for this?” he whispered, looking around at the assembled men and women. His friends, his responsibility; he was terrified of failing them again. Dreading the fact that even if things went well tonight, there was every chance some or even all of them might not make it.
He wasn't alone in his grim thoughts. Ray snorted. “Does it matter? My best years are behind me, but they weren't all that great anyway. And if Sangue kills us horribly tonight, just means they get us sooner rather than later.”
That seemed like a depressing perspective for someone with a family waiting back at the valley. Brandon wasn't the only one who didn't like hearing it, either; Jenny, who'd volunteered in Mer's place when she learned of his plan, shot the older man a disgusted look. “I've never met anyone who pisses and moans with less reason than you, Mickelson. At least Neal usually injects some humor into his whining.”
Her words weren't greeted with the response she was probably hoping for; the surviving skirmishers were still too raw about losing Reina and the others who'd died during the disastrous ambush, and bringing up Neal just reminded them of that.
This wasn't doing much for their spirits right before the most dangerous task they'd undertaken so far, so Brandon pointedly cleared his throat. “We all know our places. Go slow and careful, and when the time comes do your part of the plan and be accurate if you need to shoot bloodies.”
“If?” Andy joked, although his voice had an edge to it.
He clapped his friend on the shoulder in reassurance. “When, then. Just remember, our job is to make a huge distraction and hit the hardest Sangue targets to keep them looking outside rather than at the prisoners, so they can get away. We're the ghosts escorting them, and like ghosts we should stay invisible.”
“If you don't mind me saying, this pep talk is getting a bit longwinded,” Derrick said wryly.
Brandon bit back his irritation. “All right then, let's go.”
His dozen volunteers split up and dispersed. Some were going to sneak into the Sangue camp and plant explosives on the barracks tents and other key structures, and once they finished that get into place to begin firing at the enemy weapons emplacements. Others would be getting into place to begin ferrying the guns in to the slaves, then help guide them out of camp when the chaos started.
Jenny would be with that group, although once the guns were off the horses her job was to have them ready to pick up wounded or those too weak to walk and get the fleeing slaves moving south. She'd have water and ration bars prepared for the freed men, to hopefully give them the strength to keep going.
Fending off pursuit once everyone was safely away would be a whole other mess, but if they failed on this first step of the plan it wouldn't really matter. Brandon kept his thoughts focused on the coming task as he slipped away from the others, towards the darkened camp waiting in a clearing just north of the road.
He was going in first, to make contact with the slaves and talk them into this jailbreak. He was confident they'd agree to his offer, but even if they all decided it was too dangerous and refused, that wouldn't be a complete disaster. His volunteers would hit the camp anyway, but instead of doing it to serve as a distraction they'd focus on causing as much damage as possible and taking out the greatest number of bloodies.
&
nbsp; That was Plan B, though. One he sincerely hoped stayed in his pocket.
After a few nights of carefully watching the movements of sentries and patrols, Brandon had selected a route that would get him into the camp without being seen. He hoped. He moved slow and with utmost care, using everything he'd ever learned from Trapper and Skyler about sneaking around these mountains.
He'd done this a few times while skirmishing, although never actually sneaking into a Sangue camp. Still, those other times had been with enemies who were on guard from constant attacks, while the guards here would hopefully not be expecting any trouble. But even if they'd been literally asleep at their posts, and he'd had the experience of doing exactly this dozens of times, Brandon didn't think he'd ever get used to it.
In fact, if he had to be honest he hated it.
In its own way, moving this slowly was as exhausting as running, since it often involved being in positions that worked muscles he'd never even been aware of before. On top of the physical effort, the psychological strain was enormous; the heavy weight of the timetable hanging over his head, constantly fighting the pressure to move quickly to get it over with, feeling like it took an hour to move ten feet.
Stifling his breath and wincing at the slightest rustle of his clothing, keenly aware of the enemies ahead, then ahead and to the sides, then completely surrounding him. Knowing that every step he took put him in greater danger, made it that much less likely that he'd get away if he was discovered. His back prickled as if a bullet was about to slam into it at any second, and even though the night was chilly sweat beaded on his forehead and trickled down his back.
Brandon's approach took him along the latrine trench. Even disciplined soldiers didn't enjoy hanging around near that stench, and anyway they'd be less likely to pay attention to movement there, since people used the latrines at all hours. In fact, a couple guards were cycling a group of slaves through them as he approached.
For a moment he was tempted to try to join the group, get herded back to one of the slave pens and convince them to jailbreak from within. But aside from the added risk that represented, and the fact that he was seriously antsy about being locked in even though he'd brought heavy duty bolt cutters with him, he was also carrying his weapons and some other gear that would make him stick out like a sore thumb.
So instead he used the commotion of slaves shuffling into place along the trench to relieve themselves, making his way to a nearby barracks tent and using its cover to move deeper into the camp, where the slave pens were located.
The pens had been scattered throughout the camp, all in wide open spots, to prevent slaves from communicating and trying to organize mass revolts or escape attempts. They had a basic, efficient construction: just four chain-link fence walls bolted together, one with a door held shut with a padlock to allow entry and exit. They were buried six inches to discourage prisoners from trying to lift them or dig underneath them, and had another section of chain link to make a roof. Each one was crammed with so many slaves that they didn't even have room to all stretch out flat, and had to struggle to find a position comfortable enough to sleep.
Brandon knew he would eventually have to go around to all the pens and talk to everyone, but some were closer to guard routes or emplacements or more frequented areas of camp, or even worse than that to sources of lighting that made them more visible.
He'd picked out one near the mess hall, in a part of the camp that was almost abandoned at night, as his first visit. After creeping across the ground from cover to cover to the closest approach to the pen, he crossed the final distance in a confident saunter, muscles tense and expecting to hear a challenge shouted at him at any moment.
If so, he was hosed. He knew a bit of Spanish that he'd learned from Trapper and Skyler and Lisa, but nowhere near enough to pass as a Sangue soldier. And his people would still be getting into position to do their part of the plan; at best they might be able to offer cover fire as he fled. But it would put them in extreme danger, and even with their help he wouldn't get far.
There was no challenge, and within seconds he reached the cage and dropped down against the side of it.
Immediately on the other side of the chain links, an emaciated man glared at him balefully. “Whatever you plan to do to me, bloody, just get it over with.”
“Do I look like a guard?” Brandon hissed. Other slaves were starting to shift around to look at him, a surprised murmur sweeping through them, and he looked around nervously to see if any guards were in sight as he hastily continued. “Keep quiet and stop moving! Don't draw the guards' attention.”
The man he'd been talking to snorted, although quietly. “You think we need to be told that?” he whispered in a barely audible voice.
Fair enough. “I'm Brandon Gerry, part of a community that lives nearby. I'm-”
“The one that keeps taking out this road?” the same man interrupted.
Holy smokes, would this guy just shut up? “Yes, the same one. Sorry if that caused more trouble for you, but-”
The guy swore, tone somewhere between bitterness and amusement. “If we weren't doing this, they'd make us do something even less pleasant. At least you're rubbing dirt in their eyes, even if it means they're pissed off and treat us worse.”
Brandon didn't have time for this. “Look . . .”
“Zack.”
“Look, Zack, no offense but this is incredibly dangerous, and we don't have a lot of time.”
“You might not,” Zack shot back. “What're they going to do to us . . . lock us up, beat us, and work us to death?”
In all his plans for how the slaves would respond, he hadn't really expected this. Joyous relief was what he'd hoped for, or at worst people too frightened to want to risk their lives for the hope of freedom. But this broken, hostile indifference was something else.
Luckily, he wasn't the only one who'd had enough of Zack's lip. “Would you shut it, dude?” another prisoner hissed. “This guy didn't sneak into a camp guarded by better than a hundred bloodies to shoot the breeze.” He turned to Brandon. “I'm Carl. Please, for the love of all that's good, ignore this idiot and tell us what's going on.”
Brandon quickly explained the situation. He was vague on exact details about Camptown's location, in case any of these men were questioned by Sangue, but otherwise he laid things out straight.
Once he finished, Carl was quiet for long enough that he was afraid the man didn't believe him. “And your people, you'll be able to get us out?”
That wasn't exactly a simple question, and Brandon hesitated. “We can open the cages and arm you, create confusion in the camp to buy you time to get out. And we've got food and horses to help you keep up the pace, and can guide you back to our community.”
“I'm sensing a serious “but” here,” Zack said.
“But I've got a dozen fighters with me,” he replied through gritted teeth. “We'll help you as much as we can, but you know we're seriously outnumbered on our own.”
The men in the cage murmured uneasily. Carl cleared his throat. “So what you're saying is you can break the locks and give us weapons and support, but we have to free ourselves.”
Brandon nodded. “You know what happens if we fail. The choice is yours whether you want to risk it.”
A man near the other side of the cage snorted. “Heck, you bust open this cage and give me a rock, and I'll try it. You give me a gun and I'll hunt down every bloody POS in a hundred miles.”
Carl spoke up firmly. “I don't think there's many of us here who wouldn't leap at the chance to escape, and give Sangue some payback on the way out. But the overseers work us until we can barely stand, let alone run for freedom. How are we going to get away?”
Brandon hesitated. “I don't have any easy answers, unfortunately. We're going to have to kill the camp's guards and patrols, as many as we can, so they don't come after us. At that point, we'll do our best to get a good head start before morning, when the real pursuit begins. The good news is, if we can
make it about a day's walk south, maybe two at most, my people will be ready to cover us the rest of the way. And in the meantime, my skirmishers will be doing our best to slow down any bloodies that come after you.”
“Skirmishers, huh?” Zack said. “I like the sound of that.”
“It's a fancy name,” Carl agreed grimly. “But how do you propose to kill over a hundred guards without us all getting mown down like grass, even if we've got weapons?”
Brandon shifted position; staying crouched like this was really making his calves burn. “Well first off, I need you guys to be organized when the time comes. I need you to be aware of where the enemy fortifications are, the positions and routes of patrols and sentries, and where they sleep. That way you can be pointing your guns the right way when the shooting starts.”
“We can do that,” Zack said. “You'd be surprised what you notice when you've got nothing else to do but drag rocks that weigh more than you. And get beaten, of course.”
He ignored the man. “Then, my people plant enough C4 on all the barracks to blow the sleeping bloodies inside sky high. You'll all get ready to go, we'll time the explosions for just as we move to take out the sentries and weapon emplacements and the patrols. Once the confusion starts, you come out and join the fight. You need to move quickly, in orderly groups, and as soon as we've taken out as many bloodies as we can you head south through the camp and across the highway to where we've got our horses waiting.”
“That sounds pretty complicated . . . what if they catch on before we get all that set up?” a man in the cage said uneasily.
“Then we go straight to Plan B . . . blowing up whatever we have rigged, tossing grenades at everything else, and shooting anyone that moves that didn't come from one of the pens.” Brandon could tell from the dubious silence that Plan B didn't inspire a lot of confidence. “There's a chance things could go wrong, but my people are pretty good at skulking around in the dark, and we've planned this out carefully. As long as you guys keep quiet and don't do anything suspicious until it's go time, we should be fine.”