Knockdown

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “So eight or ten, total,” Jake said.

  “Yeah. And once they were out of the cars, they split up and spread out.”

  “Definitely not cops, then. They could be members of the same terrorist cell as these guys, but more than likely they’re either more of Cavanaugh’s Deep State killers or else they’re from the Zaragosa cartel.”

  “That’s the way I see it, too,” Barry agreed. “No matter who they are, they have us outnumbered at least four to one, and with the water behind us, there’s really nowhere for us to go.”

  “They figure to surround the shack, close in, and finish us off.” Jake paused, then added, “I wonder where they picked up our trail again.”

  “There’s no telling. The cartel and the government, they’ve both got eyes and ears all over the place. We live in a surveillance state, and have for a long time.”

  Jake sighed and shook his head.

  “Do you think this country will ever get back to being what it once was?”

  “I don’t know,” Barry said, “but I plan to keep fighting for that ideal, however long I still have any fight in me.”

  That seemed like a pretty worthwhile goal to Jake, too.

  He looked around the room and, in the last of the light, spotted a trunk of some sort shoved underneath one of the bunks. He got hold of the handle on one end and dragged it out.

  “What’s that?” Barry asked.

  “Let’s find out.”

  Jake unfastened the catches and lifted the lid. He couldn’t help but laugh at the sight that met his eyes.

  The trunk was full of guns, most of them full-auto machine guns, by the look of them.

  Barry let out a low whistle and said, “I hope those ammo boxes down at the end are full. Our odds just got better.”

  “Yeah, I’d say so, too,” Jake replied as he reached into the trunk and lifted out one of the weapons. It already had a full magazine inserted in it. “We still have the problem of this shack being almost as flimsy as balsa wood, though.”

  “And that’s why we can’t just hunker down here. We’re going to have to take the fight to them. The light’s getting bad out there, which is an advantage for us. As long as we stay together, we know that anybody else we run into is an enemy.”

  Jake handed the machine gun to Barry and picked up another one for himself. He opened one of the boxes stacked at the end of the trunk and found extra loaded magazines for the weapons. He and Barry shoved as many of them in their pockets as they could.

  “We’ll go out the back,” Barry said. “You take the left corner, I’ll take the right.”

  Jake nodded. “Got it.”

  They slipped out the back door after checking to make sure none of the men were already sneaking up on them from that direction. Jake went to his corner and propped his shoulder against the wall as he waited for the action to start.

  He didn’t have long to wait. A man popped out from behind one of the dunes on his side of the house and started to dash toward another little hillock of sand. He was carrying a shotgun.

  Jake worried for a second that the man was a legitimate law enforcement officer. But then, as the man he was watching dived behind that dune, somebody else called softly in Spanish, “Kill them all!”

  An honest cop wouldn’t be giving an order like that. That plus the Spanish indicated they were dealing with cartel killers. When the shotgunner sprang up again and tried to charge toward the shack, Jake was ready for him.

  He pressed the machine gun’s trigger and sent a stream of lead hammering into the twilight.

  The bullets caught the shotgunner in mid-stride and flung him backward. The stuttering muzzle flash from Jake’s weapon gave the other men a target, and they opened fire instantly, forcing him to duck back around the corner. Slugs chewed into the shack’s wall and sent thousands of splinters spraying in the air.

  At the other corner, Barry’s gun was pounding out a deadly rhythm, too. After a moment, it fell silent and he called, “Moving! On me!”

  Jake poked his gun around the corner long enough to let out a burst, then wheeled away from the wall and dashed after Barry, who was firing on the move as he headed for the dunes.

  The cartel soldiers hadn’t been quick enough to set up a perimeter. They couldn’t stop Barry and Jake from reaching the rolling, grassy terrain along the edge of the sound. Bullets whined nearby, and flashes of orange muzzle fire split the gray dusk.

  “Alternate fire!” Barry called. He stopped first, whirling around and dropping to one knee to spray slugs back at their pursuers.

  Jake raced on, his long legs carrying him for twenty yards or so before he turned. He made sure Barry wasn’t in his line of fire and opened up again with the machine gun.

  “Covering!” he shouted just before he pressed the trigger.

  “Moving!” Barry replied.

  The running battle continued like that as they made their way through the dunes, drawing the death squad away from the shack where they had left the prisoner. Neither Jake nor Barry had abandoned the idea of further interrogating the terrorist.

  They were heading toward the place where they had left the borrowed pickup. The sun was down and the shadows were closing in quickly when they reached it.

  Barry said, “I want you to get in the pickup and drive off.”

  “You mean I should leave you here? No way!”

  Barry pushed a fresh magazine into the weapon as he responded, “No, just start to drive off. That ought to draw them out, and I’ll be waiting for them. Then you circle back and give me a hand finishing them off.”

  “Got you.”

  Jake ran to the truck and got in while Barry retreated behind the other shack. The pickup started instantly—Doc McIntire kept it in top-notch running order—and Jake tromped the gas hard enough to make the engine roar as he started toward the highway.

  Yelling angrily, seven men emerged from the dunes and fired after the vehicle, thinking both of the men they were after were getting away.

  Barry stepped out of concealment as they did that. Clearly, they weren’t expecting him to open up on them like he did. Three men went down almost immediately, kicking out their lives.

  The pickup’s brake lights flared as Jake slammed his foot down on the pedal. He hauled the wheel around and sent the pickup sliding into a turn that threw sand in the air around the tires.

  Then the pickup surged back toward the surviving members of the death squad as Jake steered with one hand and held the stuttering machine gun out the window with the other.

  Even under these grim, dangerous circumstances, he couldn’t resist the urge to let out a loud whoop. He was caught up in the exuberance of battle.

  Once again, Jake and Barry had trapped their enemies in a crossfire, and with Jake charging toward them in the pickup and Barry coming up behind them, it took only a minute or so to wipe out the rest of the gang of killers. Jake brought the pickup to a halt while Barry checked the bodies.

  “Any survivors?” Jake asked as he stepped down from the pickup.

  Barry shook his head.

  “Not the way we were cutting them up with these guns,” he said. “We’d better make tracks. Shots from handguns are one thing, but playing these typewriters the way we were is bound to attract some attention, even with all the chaos going on in town.”

  “Typewriters?” Jake repeated with a bleak grin. “Just how old are you?”

  “Never mind that. Come on, let’s go grab our friend in the shack.”

  Driving, it took only a minute to get there. When they pulled up after circling around the parked cars left by the cartel death squad, they saw that the flimsy building had a lot of bullet holes in it.

  “Uh-oh,” Jake said. “Looks like they shot it up pretty good. Maybe we should have taken the guy with us.”

  “He would have slowed us down enough that we never would have gotten away,” Barry pointed out. “Come on, let’s hope for the best.”

  What they found hardly qualified
as “the best.” The terrorist was still tied up on the kitchen floor, but he was lying in a pool of blood now. At least one stray bullet had found him.

  He wasn’t dead yet, though, so there was that to be thankful for. Barry knelt beside him, being careful to avoid the spilled blood, and took the gag out. He said, “Listen to me. You’re hurt bad, but you’re going to be all right. We’ll get you to a doctor as soon as you tell us what else Bandar al-Saddiq is planning.”

  Jake wasn’t sure the man even heard what Barry said, but after a few seconds, his eyelids fluttered and he stared up, his eyes unfocused.

  “I will never . . . betray my brothers,” he rasped as he struggled to draw another breath into his badly wounded body. “Soon I . . . will be in paradise . . . A joyous reward . . . awaits me . . .”

  “No, it doesn’t,” Barry said. “You don’t get any reward, because you failed.”

  “No! The infidels . . . died . . .”

  “Some did. But the eagle still flies.”

  “The eagle . . . will crash . . . and die . . . and with it . . . America . . .”

  The man’s head lolled to the side. He wasn’t going to say anything else, now or ever.

  “Blast it!” Jake said. “If we’d just had a chance to question him more.” He frowned. “What was that you brought up about an eagle? I know he mentioned it before . . .”

  “Just something I thought might spook him into spilling something,” Barry replied with a shake of his head as he straightened to his feet. “He made it sound like there was something important about an eagle. But maybe it didn’t mean anything. The eagle’s one of the symbols of America, after all.”

  “I wouldn’t think a guy would try to be symbolic with his dying breath.” Jake shrugged. “But I’ve never died, so what do I know?”

  “What I know is that it’s time for us to get out of here.” Barry’s voice was icy as he went on, “We were too late this time. We weren’t able to do a thing to stop them, and a lot of people died. I don’t intend to let that happen again.”

  “Neither do I,” Jake said, “but right now, we don’t even know where to pick up the trail of the rest of them. And we’ve still got guys after us who are determined to kill us. We need to regroup and figure out our next move . . . and I want to make sure that Gretchen’s okay.”

  Barry nodded and said, “All right. We’ll head back to the doc’s place.”

  CHAPTER 56

  Gretchen Rogers stirred, felt a little twinge of pain at the movement, and winced. Her eyes opened slowly. She looked around, trying to figure out where she was and what had happened.

  Then the details of the battle she and Jake and Barry Rivers had waged against the Deep State assassins—men she had considered, if not friends, at least coworkers—came flooding back into her brain. She didn’t know who had shot her—she had assumed the fight was over—and she didn’t even know for sure that she’d been shot, but that seemed like the most probable explanation.

  She also wasn’t sure how badly she’d been hurt, but at least she’d had some medical attention. She knew that by the dressings on her wound and the IVs that were set up on both sides of the bed, a tube running to the back of each hand.

  And she was alive, so that was something.

  She could tell she wasn’t in a hospital, although she was lying in what was clearly a hospital bed and there were glass-fronted cabinets of medical supplies arranged along one wall. This looked more like a bedroom in somebody’s house, judging by the rugs on the floor and the curtains on the window.

  At least there wasn’t a guard at the door. She wasn’t in some prison hospital, under arrest for aiding and abetting federal fugitives.

  Worry gnawed at her and hurt worse than the pain from her wound. That was slight enough that Gretchen knew she’d been pumped full of painkillers. There were pills to get rid of worry, too, but she must not have been given any of them because she wanted desperately to know if Jake and Barry were all right.

  Jake . . .

  She frowned a little as a memory . . . a half-memory, more like . . . drifted into her mind. Even though it wasn’t possible, she seemed to recall him standing beside her, so big and formidable, and yet so gentle as he slipped his hand around hers . . .

  The door opened. A tall black man with a closely trimmed beard stepped into the room. Gretchen had never seen him before. Her eyes darted around, searching for something, anything, she could use as a weapon if he tried to hurt her.

  Instead, he stopped just inside the door, as if he didn’t want to make her nervous, and said in a deep voice, “I’m glad to see that you’re awake, Ms. Rogers. I know you must be curious. My name is Caleb McIntire. I’m a doctor, and this is my house you’re in. Barry Rivers is an old friend of mine. He and his nephew Jake brought you here earlier today and asked me to take care of you. I’ve attended to your wound, and you’ve been sleeping. Does that bring you up to speed?”

  Gretchen had to make two attempts to speak, because her mouth was dry as cotton. She asked, “W-Where are Jake . . . and Barry?”

  “I’m not sure, exactly. They had something else they needed to go and take care of, but they promised to come back here when they were done.”

  Gretchen’s eyelids were incredibly heavy. She believed she could risk closing them for a moment. McIntire was on the other side of the room, and if he made a move toward her, she would hear it.

  She wasn’t sure what she would do if he did, but at least she would know it.

  Even though it felt wonderful just to lie there with her eyes closed, the urgency of the mission they had set out on prodded her into opening them again. When she did, she asked, “Barry . . . trusts you?”

  “I hope so,” McIntire said. “We’ve saved each other’s life more than once, so he ought to.”

  “You’re in . . . the same line of work?”

  “Not exactly, but close enough that our paths have crossed from time to time. All that’s in the past, though. These days, I’m just a simple country vet.”

  “V-Vet? As in . . .”

  “Veterinarian.” McIntire smiled. “I prefer animal patients to human. But don’t worry. I started out treating people. I just think that, by and large, animals are more deserving of my services. I’m not that fond of people in general anymore.”

  Gretchen sighed, nodded, and said, “Most days I tend to agree with you, especially recently.” Her voice was stronger now. “Thank you for . . . making an exception.”

  “I was glad to do it. Any friend of Barry’s is worth the effort.”

  “How badly am I hurt?”

  McIntire came a little closer to the bed as he said, “You lost a considerable amount of blood. The bullet did some tissue damage, of course, but it missed the vital organs. You’ll be laid up for a while, but as long as there’s no infection, you should make a full recovery.” He smiled again. “And the scar won’t even be that bad.”

  “I don’t care about that,” Gretchen said with a sigh. “I just wish I knew . . .”

  “Whether those two are all right? So do I.”

  “How . . . how long has it been? Since they left here?”

  “About eight hours. It’s night now. They didn’t say when they would be back. I don’t think they knew.”

  “No, I don’t imagine they did.” She remembered where they had been headed, and after a moment’s thought, she decided she trusted McIntire enough to ask him more questions. “Has anything happened today? Anything . . . bad?”

  McIntire’s expression became solemn again. No, more than solemn, Gretchen thought. Grieving.

  “You mean like . . . a terrorist attack?”

  “Ohhhh,” Gretchen moaned. “What happened?”

  “There were several explosions at a train station in New York, on Long Island,” McIntire said flatly. “And the commuter train that was arriving at the time derailed. The wreck destroyed what was left of the station after the explosions. It’s too early for anything except rough estimates of the death to
ll, but it’s believed to be somewhere between a thousand and fifteen hundred.”

  Gretchen tried not to sob, but she couldn’t help it. All those people, those poor, innocent people.

  “Was that what Barry and Jake were going to try to stop?”

  All Gretchen could do was nod.

  “So . . . since they didn’t succeed, there’s a chance that they . . .”

  McIntire didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t need to. Gretchen knew exactly what he meant.

  Jake and Barry might have failed to stop the attack because they were dead.

  After a moment, McIntire drew in a deep breath and said, “I know what you’re thinking, Ms. Rogers, but we don’t have any way of knowing what happened. But I do know that Barry Rivers is a very difficult man to kill, and although I just met that young man of yours, his nephew, today, I have a feeling that Jake is pretty resilient, too.”

  Gretchen was about to automatically correct him and say that Jake wasn’t her young man when a buzzer sounded somewhere else in the house.

  She knew from the way McIntire stiffened that that wasn’t necessarily a good thing.

  “We have company,” he said. “I need to go see about that.”

  “You have alarms set up?”

  “Given my past, it seemed like the prudent thing to do.”

  Which meant that he had enemies, too, who might show up to settle a score with him. As he quickly left the room, Gretchen wondered what he might have done in the past and just what his connection with Barry Rivers was.

  None of that mattered at the moment, however. She looked around to see if she could find her pistol. It wasn’t in sight, and she wished somebody had thought to leave it within her reach.

  Flat on her back in the hospital bed, attached to the two IV stands, all she could do was lie there and wait.

  * * *

  Nobody could turn off the highway onto the road leading to the clinic without tripping a motion detector. McIntire went into his big study and library, which had several video monitors mounted on one wall. The closed-circuit infrared camera that covered the parking lot revealed a car coming to a stop.