Woo Tang looked her over. “Are you capable of shooting and hitting targets from a distance?”
“I’m not a bad shot, but I’m not the best neither.”
He gestured to a 1960s Springfield M14 they’d brought along, sequestered from one of the men who’d ambushed them the day previous. “That rifle is deadly accurate at long distances in the right hands. If you feel you are able to employ it properly, then remain here as overwatch. If that suits you.”
Jean thought a moment. “Yeah, that suits me, I suppose. But what are y’all going to do?”
“Send hate downrange,” Lauren said. “A lot of it.”
“And effect the recovery of those taken from us.” Woo Tang sent his young counterpart a quick glance. “I take it you know where I want you?”
Lauren nodded. “Right behind you.”
When they arrived at the area surrounding the shack, Woo Tang and Lauren switched to nonverbal communication consisting of hand signals and sign language. The more experienced of the pair taking the lead, they moved from one position of concealment to the next and drew nearer for the purpose of gathering as much intel as possible without being discovered.
From behind a thick patch of mature laurel sheltered in iced-up snow, Lauren brought her rifle up and used the magnified optic to search for clues through the cloudy glass window. Several figures were seen standing, pacing and moving about while another, appearing to be Lazarus, was seated, conceivably in a chair. And from this angle, Francis was nowhere to be seen.
One hand glued to her weapon, she signed her findings to Woo Tang. He nodded and sent a hand signal to move out, and the pair continued in haste to another potential hiding spot, but only made it halfway before someone opened the door.
“What the hell?” A man raised his pistol and fired wildly at them.
Caught in the open, mere yards from cover, Woo Tang shoved Lauren forward into the snow and unleashed a flurry of rounds from his M4, slicing the shooter through his abdomen. The man folded and toppled, his eyes rolling into his forehead, just as a second man exited and hurdled him.
Woo Tang expended another burst of shots, catching the second man center mass. He spun and landed on his side in the opposite direction, his body twitching and his weapon landing safely several feet away. The former SEAL then went on the move, grabbing Lauren by her jacket collar and dragging her through the snow with him.
Flailing and attempting to set her feet, she sent Woo Tang a searing look. “What are you doing?”
“Following orders.”
“You’re being ridiculous! Let go of me, Jae.”
Woo Tang refused, his eyes locked on to the open doorway. “Not until we are behind cover.”
The duo soon took position behind a stack of seasoned hardwood partially covered by a tarpaulin.
“Y’all know what you’re doing?” a voice yelled. “This really ain’t none of your concern.”
Lauren peeked over the woodpile. Woo Tang remained in place with a finger over his lips.
“If you think we’re coming out, you’re crazy. And if you think we’re letting you in, you’re insane,” the voice said. “This here is private business! And the only thing that needs to happen right now is for y’all to git!”
Lauren took a breath and rubbed her eyes. The men being held hostage were no one to her. She despised Lazarus and didn’t know Francis from Adam. If it weren’t for what Bernie and Ruth stood to lose, she wouldn’t even be here. And neither would Woo Tang, who’d gone simply because she’d persuaded him.
Her recollections glided back to when she’d first encountered Brandon and Lily. She recalled their faces, how pained their expressions had been, how sad, dejected and lost they’d been. The farm had changed nearly all of that for them. In today’s world, it was doubtful their parents would ever be found. Those types of happy endings were a rarity.
Christian had told her once about a place somewhere in the western portion of the country known as ‘the redoubt’ or ‘the promised land’, touted as a location of solitude, peace and order, where normal life had yet to be interrupted. She didn’t know if such a place truly existed, but Little Germany Farms was real. And that was why she knew something needed to be done about this.
Woo Tang gestured for her to come close. “There exist two options. Wait them out, or breach.” He slid off his rucksack, dug in and pulled out a single XM84 stun grenade. “In the essence of time, option two is applicable.”
Lauren’s eyes boggled. “There isn’t a lot of room inside, Jae.”
“I am mindful. I plan to move alone while you stand fast. The flashbang will incapacitate them, and you can cover the extraction. Do you understand?”
“Yeah, I underst—” Lauren heard a scream, a woman’s scream, and her eyes darted into the trees to the incline whence she and Woo Tang had come. Sounds of a struggle switched to a woman yelping from the pain of being beaten cut through Lauren like a knife blade. Jean was being assaulted, and she looked to Woo Tang for what to do next.
He looked conflicted still. And he was fuming over this whole mess of a situation. He could hear Jean’s cries for help as well as Lauren could, but he did not want to separate from her. Dave Graham had made it clear that no harm was to befall her, and Woo Tang couldn’t protect Lauren if he couldn’t see her. But he also couldn’t see any other way out of this.
“You must help Jean,” he said, sending a disputed gaze.
Lauren acknowledged him and readied herself.
Woo Tang trained his weapon on the building. “Break on my signal.”
She broke cover as soon as Woo Tang’s first shot was heard, and ran as hard as she could up the incline to the point of nearing exhaustion. When she crested the hill, she found Jean on the ground wrestling with a man in a camouflage hunting jacket.
Lauren raised her rifle in his direction, and the man jumped at the sight of her.
Panicked, he jerked Jean’s body up with him, then twisted her into a fierce choke hold. “Watch it there…watch it! Don’t come any closer! Do anythin’ stupid and I’ll break her neck!”
Lauren didn’t bother slowing her pace. Her sights aligned on his shoulder, she snapped the trigger, sending a round tearing into him. He yelped and went limp, falling backward away from Jean, screeching and writhing from the pain.
Jean ran to her, but Lauren drove her away with her free hand, pressing on to the wounded man with purpose.
“Hey, stop! Stop, please!” he begged. “What is this? You already shot me once! What do you want?” He tried getting away, but only tripped over his own feet. When he finally got upright, Lauren throttled him in the solar plexus with a violent front kick, knocking the wind from his lungs and putting him down for the count.
“Stay down and don’t move! That’s what I want!” Lauren slowly backed away to verify Jean’s welfare while keeping her gun trained on the bleeding man. “Are you all right?”
Jean spit blood on the ground. “He got me good a couple of times, but I’m all right now. Thank you.”
“Do you know him?”
“No, I sure don’t,” she said, her voice hoarse. “But he seems to know us.”
Lauren checked her expression. This attack wasn’t staged, and Jean had no reason to lie. She was starting to put all this together now. Lazarus had been hiding a big secret. Francis seemed to know something about it and wasn’t entirely in agreement. Jean seemed clueless, and the closer they got to their destination, the more the situation worsened. Members of their group had been shot at, abducted and now physically assaulted, yet not a hair had been harmed on a certain someone’s head.
Lauren was going to get to the bottom of this, or leave every one of these people, save Woo Tang, behind in the forest.
When Woo Tang reentered the scene along with a salvaged Lazarus and Francis, husband and wife ran to one another and embraced, while the militia leader and the bleeding man shared a bitter glare that Lauren picked up on in seconds.
“Status?” Lauren ask
ed her friend.
“Negative contacts,” Woo Tang said, giving her and the scene a once-over. “Are you squared away?”
Lauren nodded affirmation.
“Then I suggest we carry on, unless there is other business or threats to cancel.”
Still under her watchful eye, the man Lauren had shot worked to tie a bandana over his wound. “Threats? You people are the threats. All we was doin’ was our jobs.”
“There’s an epiphany. And what jobs were those?” Lauren interrogated.
The man looked her way but didn’t respond. “What’s become of the boys down in the valley?”
“Deceased,” Woo Tang replied, glaring.
“All of ’em?”
“Of course all of them.” Lazarus sauntered over to his pack. “Damn, my ears are ringin’. Can’t barely see shit, neither. Next time somebody tosses one of them flare bombs near me, send a warning. Copy?” He shouldered his pack and started off. “Now, with that junk out of the way, we can all giddyup and get the hell out of here. I’m freezing.”
“Y’all ain’t leavin’ me here alone, are you?” the wounded man piped up.
“What else should we do? Make friends and take you with us?” Lazarus replied, his back to everyone. “After what you did?”
The man chortled. “You…you son of a bitch…”
Lazarus recoiled. “What was that?”
“You heard me. You son of a bitch!”
His dingy teeth showing, Lazarus twisted and bolted for the man in a frenzy.
But Woo Tang blocked his path in an instant. “Enough! What is this nonsense? This man is injured.”
“I can see that! But he wouldn’t be”—Lazarus pointed at Lauren—“if she would’ve killed him!”
Lauren set her jaw. “Do you two know each other?”
Lazarus pretended not to hear her and treaded away.
The bleeding man seethed. “What’s the matter, Laz? Aren’t you gonna answer her?”
No one said anything for a moment.
“That’s all right, I’ll answer for you. Yeah, we do. We know each other. We all go way back,” the man said. “He knows why we’re here, too. Go ahead, Laz. Tell ’em. Tell ’em why we’re here.”
“Somebody shut him up!” Lazarus hollered.
“Tell ’em what you did that got this whole mess started. Go on, tell ’em! You fuckin’ traitor!”
“What is he talking about?” Lauren prodded.
Lazarus shrugged, his hands aloft to his sides. “I have no idea. He’s in shock; he’s talking out of his ass.”
Lauren folded her arms. The truth was set to expose itself. “The man speaks from his ass, yet he knows your name.”
“I know a lot more than that,” the man said. “I know everythin’. I know you, your family, and I know its legacy too. And I know how you soiled it. They reigned over the militia for generations, but they were fair. All that changed the day your daddy died and you got the hot seat. And the second you thought your precious command was in jeopardy, you just had to do somethin’ about it.”
“Shut up!” Lazarus barked.
“Instead of handlin’ things the right way and talkin’ things out amongst brothers, you gave an order and sent two men to do your biddin’. You sent ’em to murder another brother. And now Claudio wants you dead for tryin’ to have ’im killed.”
“Claudio?” Jean pondered, casting a stare to a shrugging Francis.
Lauren sent Lazarus a fiery glare. “Is this true?”
“I only did what was needed to keep my family’s legacy intact,” Lazarus said. “It was within my power to do so.”
“Power? Claudio never wanted no power and no nothin’ from you,” the bleeding man said. “You got jealous ’cause the boys respect him better than you. He’s a combat vet. He knows how to fight and how to train men and you don’t. People follow him and they like him, and they only do that to you because of your family name.”
Woo Tang repositioned himself and stared at both men. “And now an internal power struggle exists?”
The other man nodded. “You could say that. There’s been a lot of infightin’, too.”
“And how does this struggle impinge on the chain of command?”
Both Lazarus and the man tending his wound looked puzzled.
“I will rephrase,” said Woo Tang, a finger pointed to Lazarus. “Who assumes command during this dispute over who reigns supreme?”
“Belay that,” Lauren broke in. “What about Bernie and Ruth and their farm? And those children? And the protection your militia provides? What happens to them in the wake of this?”
Lazarus hesitated, shrugging his shoulders. “The answer’s pretty simple. It goes away.”
“What did you say?”
“I said it goes away, as in disappears,” Lazarus said. “The protection was based on a mutual understanding, a handshake, between two men, both dead and buried. Nothing was ever in writing. There’s no contract. And with me out of the loop, they’re on their own now. Same as I am, same as all of us.” He gazed around at his increasingly critical onlookers and sulked. “Whatever, y’all might as well know everything. I’m dead anyway, dead to everyone, so what difference does it make? It doesn’t matter where I go, it’s over for me. My life is shit.”
Lauren shook her head in disgust. “So Lazarus isn’t the philanthropist he pretends to be.”
“What? I ain’t no philanderer.”
“All of this has been a charade—it’s been bullshit from the word go, hasn’t it?” Lauren demanded. “This wasn’t about getting me home; it never was. And it wasn’t about helping Dave either. It was about you—saving you. Protecting your ass. Keeping this Claudio from finding you and killing you over what you did. You set this whole thing up.”
“That ain’t the half of it,” the bleeding man said. “Claudio is a decent man with morals. He’s forthright and he don’t have a reason to lie or hurt nobody. But Laz tried havin’ ’im offed and failed. And when he found out Claudio wanted ’im dead, he got scared and ran off far away, hopin’ to escape his fate. Even had us stage out here along his escape route…to clean his mess up for ’im.”
As Lazarus turned his back to everyone, Lauren sent an inquisitive stare to his whistle-blower. “What mess?”
The man looked to Lazarus as if bidding the militia leader to respond, though nothing came of it.
Lauren repeated herself, stomping the ground. “What mess?”
“Witnesses.” Francis spoke up and every eye fell on him. “Accomplices. Anyone with the slightest inkling about where he was headed.” A pause. “Y’all…weren’t supposed to make it out of the mountains.”
Jean backed away from her husband. “Francis! Sweet Jesus, that’s outrageous! How long have you known about this?”
“I didn’t know anything till after we left,” he admitted. “I swear it, Jean. And after he told me, I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it, until we started gettin’ shot at. After the first few went off, it was clear sailin’ for us. Lazarus didn’t even seem the least bit worried about it. Afterwards, it didn’t take a fool to notice all the shots taken at us were just at the truck. All of theirs were aimed right where they were sittin’.”
“Was this why you two were tusslin’?” Jean asked.
Francis nodded, then hung his head. “For what it’s worth, Lauren and Mr. Woo Tang, sir, I deeply apologize and I’d like to ask your forgiveness. I didn’t plan this, but I realize knowing about it makes me complicit. I’ll accept whatever punishment you think is suitable.”
Lauren rolled her eyes and stared at the sky, then ogled Woo Tang. “Do you believe this shit?”
“To a certain degree. Though, it does run alongside theatrics.”
Jean looked lost. “What are we all to do now? Go our separate ways?”
Sporting a casual smirk, Lauren gracefully strolled to Lazarus. She reached forward and, with a finger, touched his cheek, causing him to flinch at the point of contact.
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br /> “What?” he asked, angling away. “What now?”
“None of this is acceptable,” she hissed. “You grasp that, right? Good people put their trust in you, they relied on you, and you fucked them. And you don’t even care.”
“Oh, please! That’s life, sweetheart! Do yourself a favor, judge someone else,” Lazarus barked. “I’ve had my fill of you, young lady. I should’ve never offered to help someone so ungrateful.”
Lauren didn’t say anything. His actions were appalling, and the manner in which he verbally conveyed everything uttered in her presence exceeded deplorability by her standards. Her inner fury surged as would a volatile chemical reaction, as her smirk transmuted into a scheming smile.
Lauren drew back and throttled Lazarus with a bareknuckle jab, crushing his nose, then spun her hips and caught his lower jaw with a blinding left cross, lifting him off his feet. He fell rearward, landing flat and inert in a drift of powdery snow.
She was tuned-in now and wanted nothing more than to beat the man to within an inch of his life. His foolhardiness, selfishness, and reckless abandon had ostensibly placed hundreds of lives in unnecessary danger, including that of her own, and there was simply no justification for it.
Lauren stood there, ready to reach for him, drag him up by the collar and punch him again and again with everything she had, then watch his eyes sway into his head as crimson blood cascaded in rivulets from his shattered nose.
But instead, she found her restraint. She took a few deep breaths, exhaled slowly, and with her forearms tensing and hands still balled into tight fists, she backstepped away.
Woo Tang, who had decided not to intervene, strode to her and rested his strong, reassuring hand on her shoulder. “That was a pragmatic decision on your part. He is not worth chancing injury to yourself.”
Lauren gritted her teeth and flexed her fingers. “He isn’t worth anything.”
Woo Tang nodded accord, then sent a gaze to the recently anesthetized. “What shall we do with him?”
“I don’t care anymore, Jae. I just want to go home.”
“I understand.” Woo Tang broke away at the point Lazarus started to come around. He moved in quickly, and when the long-haired man reached for a hand, Woo Tang offered his and yanked him abruptly to his feet.
Indivisible Page 20
