by Debra Tash
Poole had one last order for his ragtag army. “Break into squads of ten. One of my men will be in command of each squad. Get out of the building. Stay close and hide. I give the signal. Listen to my men and obey their orders. Just as we planned for. The government lackeys managed to get out a distress signal. Homeland Security is almost here.”
CHAPTER 10
I was positioned directly across the street from the Distribution Center, with Poole and Hernandez and ten of their men, while Maggie and Dr. Andrews huddled together. A small number of troops were tasked with guarding the Federal prisoners we’d captured. Christina, along with a few others, had been charged with the children’s safety and were sheltered a block away from the action in the abandoned First National Bank. Mrs. Bradley remained with my group while her young boy was cared for. Secured behind a long run of brick wall, 400 feet from the Distribution Center’s front door, I waited with Mrs. Bradley and the others for our government to roll into town with the intent of cowing or killing us.
I’d removed my gloves to get a better grip on the rifle. Even with the biting chill, my hands were damp, and sweat trickled down my face as I clutched the old M14. I kept going over in my head the countless times Father had taken me out for target practice. “Steady, Becky, steady, keep your focus. Breathe.”
Hunched beside me in the snow, Mrs. Bradley whispered, “I sure hope you keep your focus.”
My cheeks flushed as I realized I’d been speaking out loud.
“If you can’t keep it, I’m in big trouble,” she added.
I stared at her a moment, studying her beautiful face, which looked aged beyond her years with the puffiness beneath her large brown eyes and wisps of blonde hair escaping her knit cap. A wan smile turned up my mouth. I put aside all my prior notions about her timidity and regretted not making friends with her when she’d moved into town.
“First name’s Rebecca.” I glanced beyond her to Poole, hunkered twenty feet from our position. “It’s Beck, for short.”
“Lois. Can’t get any shorter than that.”
“Lo. That’s pretty short.”
Lois’s face brightened, her vanquished youth emerging from behind the mask of her fears. Then that fragile youth vanished as the still air stirred with the rumble of machinery.
I spotted the heavily armored vehicle rolling down Main. It was painted black with the words Police Rescue in white on the sides and front. It was followed by Humvees, four, five, maybe more. From my position, I couldn’t be certain.
“Hold fire.” Poole’s order came as a bare whisper transmitted over the small patch stuck behind my ear. Only squad leaders had the devices. I wasn’t in command, but Maggie made sure I got one, even though I didn’t really know how to operate it. I could get only Poole’s side of the conversation, not respond or hear anyone else.
Lois shifted, her finger on the trigger, head lowered, looking as if she were aiming straight for the lead vehicle.
I put my hand on her shoulder and shook my head. Her rifle lowered a bit, and her jaw flexed.
“MRAP.” Poole’s voice again. “Ten men inside at most. Humvees, four to five for a crew. Maggie. Maggie, you hear me? Scrambler up? Okay. Confirmed. Scrambler’s in place.”
I knew what Poole meant. To keep out any drones they sent our way, there was a frequency scrambler over most of the town, not always effective, and only for smaller UAVs. Maggie and Andrews’ people in Vermont had taken control of the bunker, which survived unscathed the blast that had blown up the old farmhouse. Their people gained entrance along a hidden tunnel right under the noses of Homeland Security forces searching through the rubble. The equipment inside the bunker gave Maggie a much larger reach with the Scrambler.
“Thirty-five agents at most.” Poole again. “But more likely, just thirty. Damn, Maggie, you were right. They didn’t expect resistance.” A long pause. “Hold fire. Let them get comfortable.”
The small convoy halted in front of the Distribution Center. Several moments slipped by. Why didn’t they come out of their vehicles? Could they scan the area, even without drone surveillance? Do damage and take us out? Superior weapons would even out the numbers that were only conditionally in our favor. My breath came hard as I took in gulps of air. This time, Lois was the one who put her hand on my shoulder.
Okay. Okay, I thought, making sure this time I didn’t mutter out loud. Okay. Big gulp of air. Okay.
On the vehicle at the very end of the convoy, all four doors opened. One man exited through each door. On guard, they crouched low, shielded against sniper fire, their rifles held ready. They were dressed in black uniforms with red accents, definitely DHS. Wearing flak jackets and helmets, they looked well fed and rested, their gear new and their clothing in good repair. They contrasted with Poole’s men who, like us, were ragged and hungry.
The agents scurried toward the Distribution Center, kicked in the front door, and snapped clear. They waited a moment, peered inside, their rifles pointed toward the building’s interior. One of them said something. My guess, the muffled words of an “all-clear.” More men emerged from the remaining Humvees, not nearly as cautious as they left the safety of their vehicles’ shelters. The MRAP, as Poole called it, remained closed, the occupants still inside its armored belly. Some of the DHS agents disappeared into the Distribution Center, while others fanned out around the building’s perimeter.
“Tipton. Keep watch on the MRAP,” Poole said. “There’s an exit at the rear.”
A few painfully long minutes ticked by before I heard Poole again. “Exiting MRAP. Confirmed. Tipton—move.”
I inched closer to Poole, Lois on my heels, as our squad rushed forward. An explosion. A grenade—maybe. Close enough I could feel the ground shake beneath my boots. The target—the agents who had just exited the MRAP. Poole issued more orders, but they were partially drowned out by another explosion. The squad gave Maggie, me, and a few others cover as we ran toward the MRAP. I swung my rifle left to right, back again, one arm straight, the other bent, my finger never leaving the trigger. I gave no thought of who these people were, our countrymen, our brothers. All I knew was, The neck. A sure kill.
Lois. I lost sight of Lois. And the captain. He wasn’t anywhere nearby. Snapping noises. Bullets. So many. Each round barely missed me.
We were nearly to the MRAP’s open rear door. Knocked down by one of the explosions, a DHS agent lay on his belly in the snow. He snapped onto his back just as we rushed by him. With his rifle pointed straight at me—a pop—the sound of someone getting off a round. A red plume gushed from the agent’s torn neck.
“No!” Lois screamed.
She’d hit him, a sure kill. “Shit!” I shouted as I latched onto her hand.
A few more yards and we were at the MRAP. Andrews and Maggie were already climbing inside. Once we were through, I secured the door and took a deep breath. Lois, stunned, stood there wide-eyed. I put my hands on her shoulders and pushed her into one of the bucket seats. The seats—three on each side of the MRAP—could be folded up and out the way. On the roof was a hatchway, and beside the windows were round metal ports that could be unlatched and opened.
Andrews sat behind the wheel while Maggie took the front passenger seat. She flipped a few switches and pressed a couple of buttons on the instrument panel in front of her. “That’ll keep any of them from sending a distress signal.”
“Home office will think everything went hunky dory with the natives,” Dr. Andrews said.
Maggie chuckled as she got up and came around behind the driver’s seat to a floor-to-ceiling panel with more electronic equipment. She checked a screen, moving her finger down one edge, and whistled, shaking her head. “They didn’t even bother to switch on thermal detection.”
“Ain’t that thoughtful of them,” Andrews said as he turned and flipped a few knobs and switches himself.
I spied the battle through the fro
nt window, seeing mostly Poole’s men with a few civilians advancing toward the Distribution Center. Two windows were on either side of the MRAP, and one embedded in the rear door. Clink, clink, clink—a sound like someone tapping on the MRAP’s outer walls. Bullets. Had to be bullets striking the vehicle.
I stared at the window across from where I sat. “That glass is bulletproof, right?”
“Honey,” Andrews said, “this whole thing is bulletproof. Stops up to a .50 caliber round. Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected. MRAP. It’ll survive an IED.”
“Improvised Explosive Device, Becky,” Maggie clarified as she took her place once more in front.
“Nearly impossible to stop,” the doctor went on. “Shoot out the tires and they run flat. Homeland Security had only sixteen of them nationwide back in 2013. They used them to serve high-risk warrants. Now, the Department has close to five thousand while our armed forces have—zip.”
More fire hit the MRAP. Andrews gave us an order. “Ladies, man the sides.”
Lois and I stayed put.
“Those.” He jammed a finger at the metal ports. “One of you on either side.”
I took the right, but Lois remained seated. Opening the port, I poked the barrel of my gun through and aimed the weapon using its sight. Muscles knotted along my neck and shoulders, but I willed myself to remain poised with my finger held against the trigger as I spotted the enemy. They were moving behind the brick wall where we’d sheltered before the battle started. I caught a glimpse of their helmets. Two, maybe three of them trying to ambush our rear guard.
“They’re moving up on our guys!” I shouted, not sure what to do.
“Show them we don’t appreciate their company,” Andrews said.
The gun kicked back as I squeezed off a round. It scraped the top of the fence, sending up a spray of brick and mortar as I missed the target.
There were armed civilians, four, coming up behind the DHS agents. “God help me, please, that I don’t hit any of our own,” I whispered before firing again. I kept the enemy penned while the civilians gained ground. Successful, the civilians left the wounded agents in place and joined our rear line.
A few moments went by. Then nothing. No action at all. “It’s gone quiet,” Maggie said.
I went to the other side of the MRAP and peered out the window. It faced the Distribution Center. No explosions inside or outside the building now. No bullets being fired. DHS agents were lining up along the Center’s outer wall, arms held behind their heads, weapons piled up and out of reach.
My earpiece had gone quiet, too. I tapped the small circle, but got nothing but static. Panicked, I cried, “Where the hell is Poole?”
“Why, right here, darlin’,” came the familiar voice through the device.
“You can hear me?”
“Every little old swear word. Now open up. We’re right outside.”
I looked to Maggie.
“It’s clear,” she assured me.
I threw the latch at the rear of the vehicle and let the door swing outward. Poole stood waiting with two of his men.
He hefted himself into the MRAP. “Twenty-seven prisoners. Two in pretty bad shape. One DHS dead.”
“Your men?” Dr. Andrews asked. “Didn’t even muss their hair.”
“One dead,” Lois muttered. “The one I killed.” Tears streaked down her cheeks.
“It would have been me,” I reminded her.
“One dead,” she repeated. “Somebody’s son.”
Poole walked to the front of the vehicle and stood between Andrews and Maggie. “The day isn’t over.”
“Not by half,” she said. “Vermont is ready to upload iris scans.”
“Having subdued the minor uprising, it’s time we returned to base,” Poole said. “Now where the hell would that happen to be?”
“Homeland Security in Camden,” Maggie answered.
The plan—the one so carefully worked out by Poole and the others during the week we had spent together. Now it was time to move out, with the worst of it yet to come.
CHAPTER 11
I sat in the MRAP’s passenger seat as a caravan of five Humvees trailed behind. Each vehicle had been captured as a result of the DHS’ failed raid on our Distribution Center that morning. Poole drove the MRAP while five of his regulars along with Dr. Andrews were seated in back. Each of the Humvees carried four men, totaling the exact number that had been sent out to subdue this morning’s “minor uprising,” as Andrews had put it. Sergeant Hernandez had been left in charge of the remaining troops, our DHS prisoners, and the civilians who had been armed and were still being trained. Maggie and my sister remained behind as well. Dr. Andrews would act as my mother’s point man while they coordinated the operation with their base in Vermont. But Lois Bradley was no longer with us. Being the only one of us to have killed the enemy that morning, she’d surrendered her rifle and joined the women and children in the old bank building.
“Somebody’s son.” That’s what Lois had said. I hadn’t thought about it until that moment—somebody’s son, or husband, father, brother. To them, we were the enemy. This was how it felt to start a war, being torn in two.
I looked at Poole. Just like all of us in that caravan, he was outfitted with DHS gear and dressed in a black and red-accented uniform. Did he think about this morning’s casualty? Somebody’s son we’d left lying in the snow until there was time to bury him in a lonely grave? The first to fall in an undeclared war?
Poole glanced at me. “Beck, you okay?”
I shrugged. “Thinking about that man who died.”
He pushed back in his seat, hands clasping the wheel of that heavy machine. “More a boy. I’d say about nineteen, by the looks of him. Did you think nobody would get killed?”
I shrugged again.
“Damn.” He blew out a deep breath. “Well, it happened. This war started with the death of an American. Someone just like you and me and everyone who fought today. But ask yourself, Beck, are they really the same as you and me and everyone on our side? You’ve seen my men. And I’m using the term “men” only in the most generic way. Twenty-two of them are of the fairer sex. And each one of them, man or woman, signed on to serve their country. But what did they get for leaving hearth and home behind? Families who loved them? I’ll be honest with you, they got shit. Or next to shit, for their trouble.”
I looked over my shoulder to the men seated behind us.
“Don’t worry, Beck, you can barely hear me over the engine. But I’m not saying anything they haven’t talked about over the last few years. Benefits slashed to the bone. Pay.” He snorted. “What passed for paying us. And with everything considered, what was all our sacrificing for? Defending the land of the free? Honoring the home of the brave? Seriously, you think we didn’t see the end coming? And that boy.” His hands tightened on the wheel. “Shot dead by a civilian. And here he was armed with the latest gear. Also, you can bet, trained to kill his fellow Americans. All the while, one of the few legitimate functions of the Fed suffering deep, brutal-to-the-bone cuts, while DHS got fat on the taxpayers’ backs. The world turned upside down right in front of us and set on fire. So why don’t you ask me how I feel about that dead boy back there, Rebecca?”
The use of my full name, the look of bitterness clouding his features, frightened me. I could feel his anger, hot and ready to blow apart.
“Come on,” he prodded. “I’ll let you guess.”
“Nothing!” I shouted above the din. “You don’t feel a damn thing!”
“Wrong.” His features softened, his voice dropping so low, I found it even harder to hear him above the engine’s rumble. “I feel like we all died with him.”
I sat mute for a few moments as we rolled over the snow-covered road. “Poole.”
He glanced my way. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I.”
It took a little under thirty minutes to travel the distance to where the unit that had been sent to quell the unrest in Farmsworth had been stationed. I clutched the edge of my seat as we neared the facility, my nails digging into the upholstery. The late-autumn sun had set less than an hour ago. I stared straight ahead at the darkened landscape.
“Ease up, Honey Beck.”
I nodded and tried to settle in my seat.
We came to a stop in front of a closed gate securing the main entrance. A single light topped what looked to be a seamless stainless steel pole. Poole lowered the driver’s side window. A green beam emanating from the pole swept across the captain’s brow and down to his eyes. “Lieutenant Commander William Denning,” a disembodied voice acknowledged. “Voiceprint required.”
I leaned away from the driver’s side and latched onto the door handle, panicked as my heart rate shot up. Maggie never said anything about a voiceprint being required when we’d planned this operation.
Poole held up his hand to signal me to be still. He pulled out a flat round device from his shirt pocket and held it to his throat as he responded, “Commander William Denning reporting.”
“Accepted.”
The heavy iron gate slid open.
“How the hell did you do that?” I asked in a choked whisper.
“Have a little faith, Honey Beck. Maggie gave me this device.”
“To you, I sounded like Captain Poole. To whatever machine is on the other end of that com, it read Denning’s voiceprint.”
We rode through the open gate. Topped with barbed wire, a block wall, nearly seven feet in height, ran the compound’s perimeter. Green beams, similar to what had emanated from the pole at the gate, swept along the wall. Cones of brilliant light streamed down from well-placed staffs, illuminating nearly the entire area. The ground was covered with freshly fallen snow, brilliant white under the stark overhead LEDs. Maggie had shown us maps and satellite images. I spotted the steel hangar-sized structure where the heavy equipment was stored, a smaller building off by itself—definitely the command center housing the base’s computers—and the onsite barracks set off by itself on the other side of the base. The layout was what I remembered, but what I didn’t expect was how empty it appeared to be. I knew we’d captured half their contingent in the morning scuffle. Yet somehow I still expected to see someone standing guard, people paroling the perimeter, instead of that inhuman green light continuously panning the faceless block wall.