Shoreline

by Carolyn Baugh

  “Now!” she said, and she did not look back at him, only dashed along the barn and in through the massive opening.

  She hadn’t taken three steps into the barn when she saw the blood-stained floor where April Lewis had died. The sight made her stop in her tracks.

  It was just enough of a hesitation to allow her to be tackled by a woman who seemed to have been standing there for just that purpose. The two crashed to the floor. Nora looked up, astonished, to see an animal look on the woman’s face as she snarled, her breath hot on Nora’s face. She was pulling at Nora’s hair and scratching at her until Nora rammed her knee up into the woman’s belly.

  And then Ben was grabbing the woman’s hair and wrenching her head backwards, dragging her off of Nora. Nora was immediately on her feet, scanning the barn for other attackers, but it was eerily still. The wounded men she’d seen brought in were lying in the hall. Perhaps her attacker was meant to nurse them.

  Nora thought she did not look as though her bedside manner would be comforting.

  “Keep holding her hair, Ben—drag her away from the door.”

  Ben encircled her neck with his arm and pulled her backwards, almost to the place where Nora and Pete had had their pictures taken. They were out of sight of the main entrance. Nora was scanning the barn as they walked, afraid that a group of Patriots would appear out of nowhere.

  Nora leaned in. “Where’s the federal agent? Where’s he being held?”

  The woman rolled her eyes. “Seriously. You think I’d tell you?”

  Nora looked at Ben who yanked the woman’s hair.

  “Where?”

  The woman gave a yelp and struggled, then kept silent.

  “Kill her,” commanded Nora, coolly. “We’ll ask someone else.”

  Ben placed the muzzle of his pistol against her temple and pushed it into the skin.

  “Okay, okay,” she cried. “After the other one ran off they moved them to the farmhouse.”

  Nora’s heart sank.

  She looked desperately at Ben. Then she looked at the girl. “Well, we learned that they won’t ease up to save a hostage, there’s no point in bringing her.”

  He nodded, then cuffed her. Nora looked around, then grabbed the edge of one of the white privacy curtains hung over the stalls. She ripped it with as much force as she could muster, then shoved the piece of cloth in the woman’s mouth.

  Ben, almost with a flourish, put her under the cot, and put the bed leg through the chain of the cuffs.

  As he did so, she said, “Time?”

  “We have nine minutes, Nora.”

  “Dammit,” she breathed.

  The farmhouse, a hundred yards from the barn, had two visible defenders. There were two men pressed against the peeling paint of its west wall, firing their rifles south toward the SWAT team.

  “Do you think they’ve seen us?”

  Ben shook his head. “No way. But they’re out of range for the pistols. Use the rifle.”

  Nora holstered her pistol and pulled the rifle into her arms. She despised its deadly weight.

  They stuck close to the doorway, taking careful aim.

  “I’ll take the one who’s lakeside,” Ben said, raising his voice over the volleys of gunshot just beyond them. “You take the other,” he said.

  “Any point in aiming for legs or arms?” she asked.

  “They’re firing on federal agents, Nora. Take them down.”

  Nora nodded queasily.

  “On three,” he breathed. “One, two … three.”

  They each squeezed their triggers, firing off the high-powered rounds, then ducking back into the barn.

  They exchanged glances, then poked their heads out of the barn’s entrance. Both men had crumpled to the ground. But there was more: the lawn was suddenly dense with smoke. The SWAT team had lobbed several grenades of tear gas onto the cluster of Patriots.

  “Oh, no!” cried Nora.

  “No, no—that helps!” rejoined Ben. “But we’re gonna have to run like hell. Ready?”

  “Front door?” asked Nora.

  “Never did like being sneaky,” he answered.

  They took off, sprinting for the lodge, trying to avoid the billowing gas as it spread across the wide lawn.

  The farmhouse sat unperturbed by the commotion behind it or by the ruins of the helicopter sprawled out, still smoking, in front of it. The morning sun bathed it in bright, unassuming light.

  Nora reached the front door first, knowing that anyone inside would have seen her approach. As soon as Ben reached her, she stretched her hand to the doorknob.

  “I go in first this time,” he said.

  “Go,” she said with a quick smile. “Carefully,” she added.

  She flung open the door and Ben leapt inside, Nora covering him with the Glock.

  The living room was deathly still compared to the cacophony of sound outside. The inside of the house was elegant, striking a jarring contrast to the dilapidated outer shell. Persian-style rugs crowded the floors. The sofas were swathed in damask silk. A grand piano sat under the east window. Only the deer heads seemed out of place.

  “What if we find Martin?” Ben asked in a whisper.

  “It will be my happiest moment,” Nora whispered back, walking with quiet footsteps over floors that groaned with aged discontent.

  “I thought I’m your happiest moment,” Ben whispered, moving across the ornate rug toward the dining room and kitchen area.

  “Kissing you, killing psychos … I’ll try to sort out which I want most.”

  “You do that,” he said.

  “Bedrooms?” Nora guessed.

  “They’ll have wanted them to suffer. Gotta be some sorta basement dungeon,” he said.

  “How many minutes?”

  “Six,” he said.

  They both walked toward the kitchen seeking a basement door. It was immediately evident behind the bulky frame of a bearded Patriot. The man wore a NASCAR hat and held a shotgun that was leveled straight at them.

  Without uttering a word of warning, he fired.

  The shot rang through the stillness and Ben had just enough time to grab Nora’s blazer and yank her to the ground. The round plowed into the kitchen wall, cracking the beige marble backsplash. Before the man could advance, though, Ben had fired his Glock twice.

  NASCAR looked surprised. He turned wide hazel eyes on Ben and Nora where they lay on the cool tiled floor. Then he looked down at the red stain creeping across his paunch. He laid a hand across his gut, wrinkled his face in pain, and then collapsed on the floor.

  Ben was up in a heartbeat, dragging the man away from the door. He and Nora tore down the steps two and three at a time. “Peter!” Nora shouted into the darkness. The smell of mildew assaulted her.

  “Nora! I’m here!”

  He was sitting on the cement floor, chained to an exposed-stone wall. His face had been battered; his right eye was swollen completely shut.

  Nora looked him over, her heart contracting. “Oh, Pete!”

  “There’s no time,” said Ben, tugging hard on the chain where it attached to a massive ring in the wall. “Get out of the way, Pete, I’m going to shoot the chain off the wall.”

  “Pete, meet my boyfriend Ben,” Nora said.

  “Nice,” said Pete.

  “Nice to see you, Peter,” she said.

  Pete turned his head to meet her gaze. “Took-you-the-fuck-long-enough, Miss Nora.”

  The shot Ben squeezed off resounded through the basement. He immediately began pulling the chain away from Pete’s bound wrists.

  “You responsible for the war zone outside?” asked Pete, rubbing his wrists and coming up to a standing position with great effort.

  “We’re out of time,” Ben said.

  “Pete, I know you’re hurt. I need you to run, man. We’re gonna get out and make for the woods on the west side, then run south back to our guys.”

  Pete looked exhausted but determined.

  “After you, Miss Nora.�
��

  She galloped up the stairs, Ben and Pete on her heels. She burst into the kitchen, vaulted over the guard and then they were crossing the living room, and making for the front door. She realized that Pete had stumbled and Ben was supporting him as they ran.

  The tear gas was enveloping the lawn by now.

  Nora tugged her shirt over her mouth and nose. Ben and Pete followed suit. They looked around. There was still shouting peppered with gunfire from the south side of the barn.

  She handed her two tear gas grenades to Ben. “Let’s up our chances,” she said. “I’ll run with Pete, you throw these at the fighters.”

  Ben nodded. “Yes.” He took the grenades as Nora looped her left arm under Pete’s shoulders. She clutched her Glock and the two of them took off for the expanse of trees on the west side of the clearing.

  She refused to look back, but she heard Ben’s grunts as he lobbed each grenade, then heard him panting behind them, catching up easily as Pete’s pace was painfully slow.

  Ben was looking back and he answered a quick spate of gunfire with a few shots from his pistol. And then, miraculously, they had gained the woods.

  Nora couldn’t believe it.

  “Yes!” she sighed, as Ben came up to support Pete’s other side and they began running south.

  But three armed men were suddenly behind them. One fired off a shot that thudded into a sapling next to Nora’s right ear, splintering the wood.

  “Spencer!” she screamed as the threesome hurtled through the trees.

  Spencer did not need to be told twice.

  A hail of gunfire spilled out of the top of the sturdy ash tree and onto their pursuers. Nora did not look back, trying desperately to get Pete as far away as possible before Rogers unleashed whatever was coming next.

  But Ben glanced back. “Yes!” he called out.

  They all looked back, then, and Nora saw that Spencer had dropped all three of the men—dead, dying, or just wounded? She would not know. No one was following them and Spencer himself was shimmying down the tree, his rifle now slung over his back.

  “Go, go! We’ve gotta get out of here!”

  All of a sudden he was running with them and then outpacing them.

  “What’s happening?” shouted Ben.

  “Just go! Get out fast!”

  Nora and Ben looked left and saw that the SWAT team was piling into the back of the Bearcat. A shout had gone up from the remaining Patriots, celebrating what seemed to be a retreat.

  Nora and Ben mustered a burst of speed, panting and heaving with the weight of Pete as they maneuvered between the trees and underbrush.

  They tumbled out of the forest to find Schacht, Anna, Chid, and Ford awaiting them. Nora and Ben shoved Pete through the ambulance’s open doors and then flopped onto the ground, breathing in gasps. All three of them were completely soaked in sweat.

  Nora lay back in the grass, completely unconcerned with the possibility of ticks.

  The EMS techs began bending over Pete, tending to what Nora knew from experience had to be a broken rib—if not a few of them.

  “What’s going on?” Ben asked.

  Ford said, “Rogers’s team dumped enough tear gas on the Patriots to send them running into the barns. Now they’re set to unleash the flash-bangs.”

  Anna added, “They’ll probably start rounding them up after that.”

  Indeed, the Bearcat was drawing closer to the compound’s main structures, crushing weeds and shrubbery along the way. The SWAT team, now wearing gas masks and ear protection, poured out of the Bearcat, unleashing the thunder of stun grenades.

  * * *

  The victory shouts turned to shouts of confusion and protest.

  Nora stared at Ben, eyes wide, mouth open as she still fought to regulate her breathing.

  “Shootin’ fish in a barrel,” Pete said from behind them.

  They all looked back at Pete who was shaking his head, watching the scene on the distant lawn. The black-clad SWAT teams, all wearing gas masks, were darting into the buildings and returning with one or even two Patriots at a time. These latter would be tossed on the ground with little fanfare and then the arresting officer would hurtle back into the barn or farmhouse and return with another.

  From out of a multi-hued face, Pete gave Nora a glance. “Somehow I feel like Nora Khalil had a hand in making all this mayhem,” he said.

  “Your face is mayhem,” Nora retorted. “I just showed up for work today. Not my fault it was a messy day.”

  Pete chuckled then immediately clutched his sides in pain. “Don’t make me laugh, Miss Nora.”

  She came to a sitting position.

  Pete sat too, his face contorting painfully. “I guess my bruises aren’t gonna get much attention with this crowd.”

  They all looked at him sympathetically. “What the hell, man?” asked Derek Ford.

  Pete shrugged. “They weren’t very happy when they figured out that Nora had run off.”

  She shook her head. “I’m so sorry, Pete.”

  “You’re sorry! I’m gonna pee a bit when I cough for the next couple years. But last I knew, they came and took April Lewis away. What happened? How did we get to this?”

  His question was met with silence.

  “They killed her, didn’t they?”

  Nora took a long time to find her voice. “We thought they were going to kill you, too. So someone thought up a hostage exchange. But they were pretty set on not giving you back,” Nora explained.

  “People love me,” he said, rubbing his wrists. “What can I tell you?”

  “And also they used it as a way of taking out two of ours. We lost Sanchez and … Sheila’s dead, Pete.”

  His face grew dark. Anna looked away, tears streaking her cheeks.

  Chid supplied, “They were bent on engaging. They had to provoke the confrontation, no matter what we did.”

  Pete shook his head. “And to think I once called this post boring.”

  Ben and Nora exchanged knowing looks.

  Schacht’s pant leg had been cut up past the thigh. He leaned heavily on Chid. If it weren’t Schacht, Nora would have found his appearance absurd. But somehow the SAC brought a gravitas to the look that could not be dismissed.

  “Sir, I’m telling you, that wound needs a hospital,” Chid said.

  “And I’m telling you it’s fine,” he snapped.

  The EMS team was trying to wrap Pete’s rib cage.

  Rogers and his men had been charged with finding Gabe Baker and Will Martin among the barrel’s fish.

  “It’s going to be ugly,” Ford observed.

  Three ambulances and a fire truck suddenly entered the compound in a howling tag-team. Rogers flagged down the first ambulance. He conferred with the driver and motioned to the growing group on the lawn.

  Nora realized that he had probably called them, indeed that their window for getting Pete out had been predetermined by how long it would take for the extra emergency services crews to come.

  “They know that if they find either of those two they must keep them alive at all costs?” Chid asked.

  Schacht was nodding. “I discussed it with Rogers multiple times. He gets it.”

  “You think that Martin is on site?” Ben asked. “We were in the farmhouse.…”

  “Description?” interrupted Chid, interested.

  “Swanky,” said Ben.

  Nora nodded.

  “Fancy?” Chid pressed. “It’s my bet that the interior doesn’t match the shabby exterior, that’s all. That Martin had been fixing it up on the down-low with alt-right funds.”

  “That would explain the marble countertops,” Nora conceded. “I’m more concerned with the fact that there’s a big chubby guy bleeding on the pretty tiled floor.”

  “Did it look like a place where a truck driver would hole up? Or a mad beer magnate?”

  Ford looked over. “Can you be called a magnate if your company went bust?”

  Ben said, “The guy I shot didn’t
look like the old photos of Will Martin you found.”

  Rogers came jogging toward them.

  “We have Gabriel Baker in custody,” he said, a cascade of sweat pouring off his cheeks and dripping off the tip of his nose. “He’s hurt though. It will be best to talk to him where he is.”

  “And where is he?” asked Anna.

  “Next to the arsenal barn. The south wind was dispersing the tear gas so we have about fifteen there at this point.”

  “Casualties?” Schacht asked.

  “I have at this count eleven dead, twenty-one in custody. Of the twenty-one, a third are injured. Baker is one.”

  “Kids?”

  “Holed up in the third barn. About seventeen of them, all without a scratch. We’re making sure there are no others stashed elsewhere.”

  The agents exchanged heavy glances. Nora nodded, conceding the point about the kids, relieved.

  Rogers suggested that they would need to put Gabe Baker in an ambulance and thus it made sense that Pete and Schacht ride up in the vehicle.

  “Yeah, turns out the third barn is also the garage. And gas station,” Rogers offered as the group started walking north toward the lake. “Oh, and mess hall apparently.”

  They all walked slowly, unwilling to prolong the intense pace that the week had dictated. “Quite an operation,” Ben observed.

  Rogers shrugged. “I’ve seen bigger. Plenty of groups that if given half a chance would have done as much or more. Others were just too ideologically dispersed, or, when it came time, not resolved enough to take violent action.”

  “How did this group get their resolve?” Ben asked.

  Nora volunteered. “Careful control of information,” she said. “The TV system in the bunkhouse is … it’s on a loop. Just cycling through a very selective smattering of images and ideas.”

  “Yeah, but they had to be convinced to come here.” All of them looked out at the lake, the water reflecting a vivid blue sky. Now that the gunfire had subsided, the occasional chirping of a bird began to echo through the air. Nora could tell that the others had had similar thoughts: the nearly surreal beauty of the place had been violated.

  Ford said slowly, “Easy enough to recruit from survivalist fairs and through Internet campaigns and gun rallies. The pictures on their site are showing otherwise marginalized people taking power with their own hands. Before the election, the rural poor were feeling weak and exhausted, disenfranchised. On the right day, in the right circumstances, all this white power stuff is going to look good. Blaming someone else for your woes is going to feel good. Easy enough to recruit your sister or your out-of-work neighbor.” He paused as he looked down at the spot where Sheila died. “Or your wife.”