Larry stepped in front of Joe and raised his M4. The move surprised the man in front of him as much as it did Joe. Whether it was the right thing to do remained to be seen.
“Whoa, Larry. They’re just scared,” Joe said, placing his hand on the barrel of Larry’s M4. He slowly lowered it to the ground. “Get them to the hospital. I thought that’s where y’all were going?” Joe said, looking to Balboa, Reggie, and Boyd.
“They heard the tank and came running. We tried to tell ‘em,” Balboa said.
Joe turned to the angry mob. “Get the fuck out of here. Balboa, Reggie, and Boyd are taking you all to the hospital. Stay there until the chopper gets there. I don’t need you all out here becoming victims. Get out of here, now!”
The incessant rumbling that had signaled the coming of trouble now gave way to an all-out quake. The ground shook beneath their feet. Joe knew it was time to get the hell out of Dodge. He gave Balboa a stern look. His friend knew the look. It was the same one that Balboa had given him prior to setting up a .50 cal Ma Deuce at the entrance to Monroe County Hospital all those years ago. It was a look of both fear and haste. Balboa got the idea.
“Get. Them. Out. Of. Here.” Joe didn’t have to say it, but he did anyway.
Balboa nodded. He’d seen that look before, just once. And just like the first time he saw it, it scared the shit out of him. The townsfolk had started to argue amongst one another again, so Balboa channeled his inner Fezzik.
“Everybody! Move!” Balboa bellowed out.
The townsfolk stopped immediately. In the short time that he’d been in Tazewell, Balboa had gotten a reputation for being very soft-spoken. However, when he talked, people listened. This was no different. The angry throng moved along, ushered by the big man.
Joe gave one last look to the group of people that wanted to crucify him just ten seconds before. If they only knew what was coming. If they had any indication of what was about to go down, they would have taken off running hours ago or burned Joe at the stake when he showed up over four months ago.
Joe wasted no time. He grabbed hold of the aluminum ladder and quickly climbed to the top, all the time wondering what was going to be there when he got there.
At first, he wasn’t surprised. Barreling down the road in front of him was the M1 Abrams. Flanked on either side of the tank were MRAPs (Mine Resistant Ambush Protected), giant armored vehicles on an International chassis. The MRAP was used as troop transport and could withstand anything short of a direct hit from the tank riding alongside it.
Only the tank wasn’t alone.
“Shit,” Joe muttered under his breath.
“What is it?” Larry asked as he climbed up. Taking a look at the road, the question answered itself. “Damn.”
Joe scrambled along the top of the wall. Tell me I’m seeing things. Tell me that there isn’t…
Shit.
* * *
Balboa, Reggie, and Boyd moved as quickly as they could. Convincing nearly fifty souls to move was a hell of a lot easier than actually corralling them. The residents of Tazewell grabbed whatever they could carry, and a few things they couldn’t, trying to escape. Balboa ushered them as fast as he could, trying to get them to leave what wasn’t necessary.
“Where are we going?” asked a woman, carrying a child with her.
“Stop shoving!” yelled an older man.
Balboa stepped in and separated the man from another older man. “Knock it off! Do you old farts have any idea what’s coming? Do you? Did you really want to see what that was rolling down Route 460? Quit your bitching and move it! The faster we get to the hospital, the faster you can get out of here!”
The man tore himself away from Balboa’s grip. “If it weren’t for you and your goddamned friends, we wouldn’t have to!”
Balboa stepped to the man. He stood nose-to-nose with the disgruntled resident. “Y’all are damn lucky to have made it this far without anyone fuckin’ with you. If you’d like to keep on living that untouched life, I suggest you keep moving.”
The man scoffed and walked off.
The group continued quickly towards the newly constructed east gate, where Laura had gotten the message to get it ready. Roman was with her, waving people out of town. The gate had taken nearly a week to construct properly, now all for naught. Roman shoved the door open a little further as he saw the throng of twenty or so approaching the gate.
“Come on! Get to the hospital, get inside, and stay quiet!” Roman said, and then repeated himself twice.
“Is that everyone?” Laura asked, pushing more through the gate.
“I think so. We had a couple hole up at the chow hall, but Jamie ran them off. He’s posted up on top of the building,” Reggie said.
“Take these people and get to the hospital. Make sure they are protected. ETA on the chopper is about thirty minutes, but they should be able to get everyone with one trip,” Balboa said, pointing to Roman.
“Are you sure? You guys going to hold off these assholes by your damn self?” Roman asked.
Balboa shrugged. “I don’t know. What I do know is that we have to stall them for at least the next half-hour. If we can do that, air support can take care of the rest.”
Roman glanced to the hospital and back to Balboa. “I hope your right, big homie. Or else we gonna have one helluva fight on our hands.”
“We’re gonna have one helluva fight anyway. Might as well make it worth our while,” Balboa said.
A rifle clattered to the ground behind them. Balboa and Roman turned to see a man frantically grabbing one of Joe’s gifted M4s. The man snatched it up and haphazardly slung it over his shoulder, desperately trying to get out of town. Balboa motioned for Roman to follow them.
“Get them to the hospital and hide. I’ve got some business to take care of,” Balboa said.
Roman nodded. “You gonna go help hold ‘em off?”
“I’ll do what I can.”
Roman held his hand out. Balboa shook it quickly.
“Good luck, Balboa. I think you’re going to need it.”
* * *
Father Rife could see Tazewell’s walls in his sights. What he couldn’t see was resistance. According to one of his scouts, the town was well aware of their approach, but it sure as hell didn’t look that way. As they had rounded the last corner of Route 16, he’d scanned the horizon, trying to eye any sort of sentries posted up on the wall. There were none. He looked for booby traps. Again, nothing. Maybe Tazewell had gotten wise and left the town to the worthy.
Rife nudged his horse forward. His followers weren’t far behind, but far enough for him to take notice of their lack of enthusiasm. He was no military genius, no tactical master, but the fact that the approach was so easy did give him pause. As he looked to the wall, a single man popped up over the edge, and then quickly ducked back down. Rife laughed.
“One man! That is all these heathens will dedicate to protecting them? They deserve to fall!” Rife said, projecting his voice over his shoulder to the still slow-going mass.
“Father is right! They do not protect their own as we do! Let us attack them now, Father!” a voice cried out from the group.
Rife grinned and eased his horse around, facing his companions. “Then let us take the city! Like the Christians taking back Jerusalem, we will reclaim what is ours!” Rife turned back and pointed to the walls. “Attack them! Spare no one!”
The group erupted in a roar of acknowledgement. Within a few seconds, the entire horde of his followers sprinted forth, aiming to take the town for their own.
Seconds after that, the roar deafened.
CHAPTER 14
Not one, but two tanks slowly crawled towards the wall. As Joe watched, the single-file procession fanned out into a wall of armor, slowly making its way towards them. The MRAPs pulled back as the two tanks moved forward, aiming their massive barrels squarely at the gate. Joe stood at the top of the gate, frozen in terror. This was the end. This was what the last decade of running from his
enemy had led to.
Time to face the music, however terrible the song.
The ladder clanged behind him as Rick climbed up. Rick was quickly clambering up with Joe’s rifle slung across his back. The battered M4 wasn’t the prettiest thing to look at, but it still worked, more than he could say for the vast majority of the stuff he had nowadays.
Joe reached down and helped Rick up the last few rungs.
“Figured you might need this, Dad,” Rick said, handing the M4 over. He looked at the armored procession headed towards them. “On second thought, maybe we need something a little bigger.”
Joe grabbed the rifle and checked the chamber and mag. “Yeah, no shit. How much ammo you got?”
“Brought you three mags, not including the one in it. I have about thirty rounds of .308 for the 700. Better hope that’s enough.” Rick never took his eyes off the tanks.
Joe pulled the sling over his head and gripped the rifle tightly. “We better pray ZBRA gets here soon. Otherwise, I don’t think any of this is going to matter.”
Rick finally drew his gaze away from the tanks. “Dad, I’m scared.”
Joe swallowed hard. “Me too, son. Me too.”
After a few tense moments, the procession stopped. While it didn’t appear that they were going to fire on them again, Joe wouldn’t put it past them to just run roughshod over the town. Any sign of stoppage or anything that would slow them down was welcome right now. The precious few minutes that he could stall them, the better off they would be. Joe didn’t have a half hours’ worth of stalling readily available, so anything that slowed them down helped.
Directly ahead, about fifty yards away, was where they stopped. On either side of the tanks was what used to be a residential neighborhood. Nearly four months ago, Captain White and his LAV had been blown all to hell right near where Wyatt now parked his armament. The irony was not lost on Joe. He’d managed to destroy the man he thought to be Wyatt, only to have the real deal come strolling up a few months later. He’d been prepared to take out Captain White, lining the road with explosives. The resulting blast had taken out the Humvee, but barely damaged the LAV. Taking out the large, armored vehicle had been Jamie and Cornbread’s doing.
Joe glanced off to his left. He knew that somewhere on top of the Chow Hall was Jamie and his .50 cal Barrett. He didn’t want to give away Jamie’s position, but he couldn’t see it either. He hoped that there was a good line of sight, but there were buildings and trees still in the way.
Joe gripped his M4 even tighter. Whatever was going on in his stomach was pale in comparison to what was going on in his head. He had one objective now, even if it meant his death. Stall as long as possible and pray that there were no issues with ZBRA evac.
The engines on the Abrams turned off, one at a time.
“Here we go…” Joe mumbled under his breath.
A painful few moments of silence passed. Joe was half-expecting the turret to turn to an as-yet-unidentified target and begin firing, but it never did. A second later, the hatch on both Abrams creaked open. The tanks were probably a decade old when they were left derelict and now another decade later had not been kind to the hulking vehicles. Rust spots and obvious metal fatigue had taken their toll. The hatches clanged against the top, one after another. Two figures appeared out of the open hatches. The first one Joe didn’t recognize. The second one he did.
There he was.
Andrew Wyatt had aged considerably beyond his years. The last image that Joe had of the psychotic lieutenant was a twentysomething man with the world at his feet and a considerably bright future as an officer of the United States Marine Corps. The man that emerged from the tank was not that man. He’d gained about forty pounds and aged twice as fast as he should have. Evidence of a sedentary lifestyle was obvious. Wyatt pulled himself up and sat on the lid of the hatch.
“Well now! Don’t we have a fucking lovely town here! The walls are a nice touch, although I think I would have gone with something more…bulletproof. You never know when someone might come and kick your sandcastle down. Harder to do that when the castle is concrete, don’t you think…Oh fuck, what was your name again?” Wyatt said, grinning.
Joe ground his teeth. Stall him. That’s your job now. “Really? After all these years and all the bullshit you’ve put me through, and you don’t even remember my name? Bad move, Lieutenant, bad move.”
Wyatt slid down from the hatch and nonchalantly rested his arm on the Abrams large 105mm barrel. “It’s General now, and don’t be all butthurt. Of course I remember you. You’re the fucker that gave me a rather nasty infection in my leg. Damn near lost the thing. I haven’t taken that many antibiotics since I got the clap banging one of my ex-girlfriend’s roommates. Monroeville, Alabama, wasn’t it? God that seems like such a long time ago. How’d that train work out for you, Joe?”
Joe was unfazed. “Broke down not long after our conversation. I figure that was a sign.”
“A sign of what, exactly? Maybe if you’d stayed on that train, you wouldn’t be here in the situation you’re in now. Maybe our paths would have never crossed, but we’ll never know. Will we?”
“I guess not. You mind telling me what you’re doing up here in my neck of the woods? Seems like an awful long way wasting a lot of resources to come after me. Am I really that important? My people here aren’t one’s for going after others, even if they deserve it.”
Wyatt grinned devilishly. “You don’t go after others? Well now, I must be mistaken!” He looked around to the group of men slowly surrounding the tanks. “Because my boys here seem to think that you took out some of their friends. First, you killed one of my groups in Kentucky, then you killed one of my captains from Tennessee, and now I’m missing a scout team that I sent to your very town. Now…you wanna retract that previous statement?”
Joe leaned forward against the wall. “We don’t go looking for trouble. Your men attacked us in Kentucky, your captain and his men attacked my town, and your scout team isn’t that great because one is dead and the other is in our custody. Now…you want to make a trade? Because that’s as far as you’re going here. I have one of your men that I will give back to you in exchange for you leaving. That’s my only offer. Take it or leave it.”
“While I do want my scout team back. It’s not my biggest problem. My biggest problem is this whole goddamn town. You’re in my way. How am I supposed to take back Washington D.C. with this shithole town in the way?” Wyatt said, pacing back and forth in front of the tank.
“Do you honestly think D.C. is even still there? It’s been ten years, Wyatt. You want to take this country back? Start by not being such an asshole. Your men attack whoever they want and take whatever they want. We don’t provoke them, but we will defend ourselves. If you don’t leave, we will be forced to defend ourselves again. Don’t mistake our kindness for weakness,” Joe said.
A rumbling in his gut told him what Wyatt was thinking. Even though he couldn’t nail it down, the fact of the matter was that Wyatt was going to attack at some point. The cat-and-mouse game they were playing would eventually come to a head and God only knows what would happen next. Blood was going to be shed.
But when?
An explosion on the other side of town started that countdown.
Joe flinched, quickly looking towards the north side of town. Cornbread taking care of Father Rife. At least those assholes are getting theirs.
Wyatt didn’t flinch. Looking towards the north side of town; it was almost like he expected something to pop off soon.
“Sounds like you got company, hoss. Might want to check that out,” Wyatt said sarcastically.
Joe slowly turned back to Wyatt. “Like I said, we don’t attack others, but we will defend ourselves. Unless you want to make a trade.”
Wyatt chuckled. “And what do you have that I want? Other than for you and your town to get the fuck outta my way?”
Joe motioned below. Unbeknownst to Wyatt, Boyd and Reggie had brought two men to trade back
to him. The first was Duncan, the living half of the recon team that Wyatt had sent to scout the town. He was handcuffed and gagged, still bleeding from his shoulder wound. The bleeding had slowed, but was still life-threatening if he didn’t get help soon. They’d done what they could for him, but didn’t have much to spare in medical supplies. The other man was a surprise to Joe, but he gave him a wink, signaling that there was a plan in place. Joe hoped that it was a gamble that would pay off.
It was Captain White.
Boyd half-dragged, half-carried the wounded Duncan up the ladder. White had been handcuffed in the front so that he could climb the ladder himself. White had come up with the plan after the first round had been fired over the town. If Wyatt wouldn’t take the trade, maybe White could sabotage them from the inside somehow. It was a risky bet, but it was one he was willing to take.
Joe grabbed Duncan by the back of his shirt and showed him to Wyatt. “His partner didn’t make it, but he might. You take him and Captain White and leave. Captain White has been our prisoner for the last four months. He is unharmed aside from a gunshot wound that we treated. We took care of him and made sure he stayed amongst the living. We can negotiate,” Joe said.
Wyatt seemed to contemplate the idea. “Captain White. Have these people done what they have claimed? Have you been well taken care of?”
White writhed the handcuffs. “Aside from these damn cuffs and some shitty MREs, I’ve been fine. These people have taken care of me, yes, sir.”
Wyatt’s brow furrowed. “And how do I know that you haven’t gone all Stockholm Syndrome on me since then?”
A bead of sweat popped up on White’s brow. Joe could see that the question gave him reason to pause. White, though, kept his calm and answered coolly.
“If I knew I wouldn’t get shot again, I’d take this fucker out right now. He’s already shot me once and I’d rather not have a repeat, if it’s all the same, sir,” White answered.
Six Feet From Hell (Book 6): End Game Page 8
