The Day After Never (Book 4): Retribution

by Russell Blake

  “Maybe…three quarters.”

  He adjusted his focus and saw the boy who sort of fit the description. “Dirt on his left cheek?”

  “That’s him, Lucas! That’s Tim.”

  Lucas swept the area with the glasses, marking the guards’ positions relative to the boys. The good news was that the horsemen didn’t seem to have much inclination to move in the muggy swelter, preferring to sit on their horses and watch over the laborers, only occasionally goading their steeds to bark orders at the slaves before ambling back to what Lucas presumed were their assigned stations.

  “You have to get him,” Sierra whispered, her voice almost frantic.

  “Also got to get away without us getting killed,” Lucas answered reasonably, continuing to watch the nearest guard.

  “Can’t you sneak near him and tell him to follow you out?”

  “That would work until one of the others sounded the alarm.”

  “Why would they? They’re all in the same boat.”

  He didn’t want to have to explain his reasoning to Sierra – that the other boys would be punished if Tim disappeared, possibly executed for not alerting the guards. Instead, he offered a terse response. “Don’t want to risk it.”

  Sierra’s voice hardened. “Lucas, we came all this way and found him. You have to do something.”

  He slowly lowered the glasses. “Sierra, we’ll get him out of there. But we’re not going to rush in and get caught. That won’t accomplish anything, so cool your jets and let me think this through.”

  The resolve in his tone seemed to calm her, and she nodded mutely. He raised the binoculars again and scanned the rows, calculating how he could get to the boy without being seen by the guards or any of the other crews. After twenty minutes of patiently watching the boys’ progress along the row, he handed Sierra the glasses and lowered himself down the tree trunk.

  “You figure out how to do it?” she asked.

  “Guess we’ll find out soon enough.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Wait here. If they start shooting, make for the horses and get out of here.”

  “I’m not going to leave you and Tim.”

  “Won’t do anyone much good dead. Better to live to fight another day, Sierra. If you’ve learned anything from me, that should be it.”

  “I hate it when you lecture me, Lucas.”

  Lucas didn’t respond, already focused on the task at hand. He edged away, crouching in the brush as he made his way toward the field, wondering to himself what the hell he thought he was doing, trying to penetrate a guarded field in broad daylight.

  It took him five minutes to creep to where he’d spotted a promising area of the fence that ringed the property, and he eyed the sagging barbed wire, a shred of fabric stuck to it where some unfortunate had presumably made a run for freedom – no doubt with disastrous results. That gave him further pause. If anything tipped off the guards, he and the boy would be dead meat. There was no way they’d be able to escape on foot with six mounted gunmen giving chase, especially while it was light out.

  He debated returning to Sierra and explaining the harsh reality of their situation, but thought better of it. He’d at least give it a shot and see how close he could get. The guards weren’t watching to ensure nobody tried to sneak into the slave camp, which was his only edge – though a slim one at that.

  Lucas spread the wire until he could comfortably make it through the opening and dog-crawled to the first thick row of cane. Once up close, he saw that the row was impossibly dense, and realized that his idea of finding a gap in the cane was misguided. That left him with crawling in full view of any interested guards to one of the openings through which crews could traverse the rows, which would be suicide.

  His thoughts were cut short by the sound of hooves from his left, one row over. A guard was making his way along the row – whether routine or not, Lucas didn’t know, but if it wasn’t, he had only seconds to take action.

  Lucas scurried back to the gap in the fence. His boots were disappearing through the hole when the sound of the horse turning into the row vindicated his decision. He freed his M4 and lay still, holding his breath, a trickle of sweat working its way down his face as he prepared to engage.

  The hooves neared the breach in the fence and stopped a few yards away from where Lucas was hiding. His finger moved to the trigger, his pulse thudding in his ears. The horse snorted irritably, and then boots hit the ground and walked to the gap.

  A radio crackled and Lucas heard a raspy voice from nearby.

  “I thought they fixed the fence over by L section. Over.”

  “They said they did. Over.”

  “Did a piss-poor job. Get someone out here and do it right. They didn’t string new wire. Over.”

  “I’ll add it to the list. You must be bored today. Over.”

  “Not too bored to whup your ass. Just do it. Over and out.”

  A pair of boots stood facing the gap. Lucas lay on his back only a few yards away with his rifle pointed at the guard’s shins and his legs spread so his feet were concealed by the brush. He waited for what seemed like a small eternity, and then a stream of fluid splashed onto the fence wire.

  The guard finished relieving himself with a sigh and trod back to his horse, and Lucas resumed breathing. He waited for the hooves to recede before pulling himself slowly further into the brush, the miss too near for his liking.

  When he returned to Sierra, she was frowning, her worry clear. Lucas told her what had happened, and her expression changed from concerned to shocked.

  “Oh, my God, Lucas…”

  “Yeah. Don’t want to do that again.”

  “Then how…”

  “We’re going to watch and wait. Once we know when the shift ends, what the guards do, and where they take the kids, we can see if there’s a better way of approaching this. But right now I’d say there’s zero chance of making it out alive trying something during the day.”

  “So we’re just going to watch?”

  Lucas nodded. “It’s called planning, Sierra. You want your son back alive, we have to do this right. Otherwise he and I will die because we didn’t do our homework.”

  Sierra’s brow creased and she resumed staring through the glasses at her little boy laboring in the relentless heat, close enough to reach out and touch, and yet as inaccessible as if he’d been on another continent.

  Chapter 38

  It was dark when Lucas and Sierra descended from their perch and returned to the horses. The slaves had been herded toward a low building connected to the main plant, their tools confiscated before they entered, Lucas had seen through his glasses. Sierra’s impatience was palpable, but he was still on edge from the close encounter with the guard, so he ignored it, determined to be systematic in his casing of the factory.

  They moved closer to the buildings and settled in for the night where they could watch the guard shifts. Sierra eventually drifted off, leaving Lucas to his vigil, and he passed a sleepless night.

  An hour after dawn the laborers, children and adults alike, filed from the building, and bowls of gruel were distributed to them. After ten minutes to eat, the guards passed out the tools and directed them to the fields for a repeat of the prior day.

  Lucas watched the boys go to work, and when Sierra awoke, he whispered to her, “No point in spending all day monitoring this again. We have to move at night. Let’s find someplace secure, and I’ll try to get some sleep.”

  “I want to watch Tim.”

  “Sierra, the tiniest slip of any kind and they’ll come for you. Then we’re screwed. We can’t afford that. I’ll make my move tonight, but I need sleep, and I can’t do so if I have to worry about you getting an idea and acting on it while I’m out.”

  He’d read her intentions accurately based on the dark look she gave him. He was too tired to engage further and walked to where Tango waited. Sierra reluctantly followed him and climbed onto Nugget, and they rode for a half ho
ur until they found a secluded spot near a stream where the horses could drink and graze and Lucas could rest.

  The day passed quietly, with Lucas snatching sleep in one- and two-hour bursts. Once it was dark again, they rode back to their observation spot and Lucas briefed Sierra on his plan.

  “There are only two guards outside the building where Tim’s being kept. If I can take them out silently, I can find him, detonate a grenade, and we can slip away in the chaos. By the time they figure out one of the boys is gone, we’ll be in the clear.”

  “Won’t the grenade lead them straight to you? Why alert anyone if you don’t have to?”

  “I may not have to set it off, depending on how the sleeping quarters are set up. But I’m assuming that they’re all in one big room, in which case the others will see me. Like I explained earlier, there’s no chance that the boys will stay quiet once I leave with Tim. I want things confused for as long as possible. So yes, I’m drawing attention – but by the same token, the kids will be terrified and the Crew distrustful of anything they say, which buys us time.” He paused. “Hopefully enough to get a good head start.”

  Lightning veined the sky and a peal of thunder rumbled several seconds later. Lucas eyed the sky.

  “Smells like rain’s coming. That could work in our favor. I need you to wait here with the horses. Under no circumstances move, or leave, unless I’m not back by morning. Promise me you’ll do that, Sierra. Please. If you want to see Tim alive, you have to do as I ask.”

  “I promise.”

  “Good.”

  She looked into his eyes. “So you’re going?”

  “Not yet. I’m going to wait until they’re nearing the end of the first watch shift. The guards will be tired by then. And if we’re lucky, it’ll rain by then, which will serve as cover for me.”

  “How long?”

  “Just before midnight.”

  They settled in for the wait, and the hours crawled by. Lucas’s wish for rain was rewarded when a cloudburst sent sheets of water blowing across the cane fields, dropping visibility to a matter of yards. At eleven thirty he removed his crossbow and four quarrels from his saddlebag and handed Sierra his M4. She took it wordlessly, and he strapped his night vision monocle into place and switched it on.

  “You’re not going to need your rifle?” she asked.

  “No. Whole point to this is to get in and get out silently.”

  “What if you have to shoot it out?”

  “Doesn’t matter what I’m armed with at that point, Sierra. There are way more of them than me. This isn’t that kind of plan.”

  Worry crossed her face. “Are you sure?”

  He leaned into her and kissed her on the lips. When he drew back, her eyes were moist. He flipped the monocle down so it was in his field of vision and turned from her, whispering as he did, “Don’t worry. I can do this.”

  She watched him cock the crossbow and load a quarrel, and then he disappeared into the rain, his boots leaving puddles in his wake.

  Lucas darted to the gap in the fence and slid through it, thankful that his bet that the Crew had been too slothful to fix it had proved a safe one. He leapt to his feet, the rain rinsing the mud from his clothes, and crept along the row until he reached the opening that would take him to the next channel. He repeated the process until the rum factory loomed above him in the darkness, the rain now lessening to a steady drizzle.

  He’d noted the guards had bolted the access doors to the sleeping quarters the prior night, and was guessing that they were less to prevent intruders from penetrating than a precaution against the slaves trying to escape. That impression was confirmed when he spied the first guard standing in the shelter of an overhang and turned toward the building rather than the fields.

  Lucas spotted the second guard at the far corner of the building, seated on a crate, a rain parka draped over his torso and his gun in his lap. This man was looking out at the field, making him the first target for Lucas’s crossbow. Lucas edged along the row until he figured he was no more than twenty yards from the guard, and then parted the cane until he could see him through the haze of precipitation.

  The thwack of the bow discharging was masked by the curtain of sugar cane. The quarrel drove home through the guard’s chest, and he slumped forward as he clutched at the shaft with dying hands. Lucas waited a few beats before cocking and loading another bolt, and when he was sure the guard he’d shot was dead, he retreated to where the first guard was standing, as yet unaware of his companion’s demise.

  Lucas stepped from the nearby gap and crept along the cane until he was close enough to be confident of a head shot and loosed the bolt. The quarrel skewered the man’s skull through his temples, and he dropped like a building in free fall, his AK-47 clattering beside him.

  Lucas was in motion before the guard hit the ground, sprinting through the rain, thankful for the cover of darkness and the storm. Just as he reached the dead man, the sky brightened with a flash of lightning, and his ears popped from the explosion of thunder that immediately followed. He froze at the sound and then drew the crossbow and fitted a bolt in place before heading for the door.

  He worked the bolt free and grimaced at the loud scrape it made. He repeated the maneuver with the second bolt at eye level with the same result and then pulled the door open, unsure what he would find inside.

  A corridor led into the building, flanked by industrial metal doors on either side of the long passage. Lucas took a tentative step over the threshold, dripping water as he went, and approached the first door. He reached down and twisted the corroded lever handle and swung the door inward, leading with the crossbow, and gagged at the odor of human waste: he’d stumbled across what passed for the latrine – holes cut in the floor – the area foul beyond comprehension.

  He was turning away when a flashlight beam struck his monocle from the end of the hall, blinding him.

  A voice called out, “Freeze.”

  Lucas blinked away stars and debated reaching for the Kimber at his hip or firing the crossbow blindly at the voice, but decided not to when he heard multiple sets of boots rushing toward him.

  “You go for the pistol, I’ll blow your balls off,” another voice warned, and Lucas stood motionless, obviously outnumbered.

  A truncheon slammed against the side of his head, knocking the monocle ajar, and strong hands wrenched the crossbow from his grasp as his knees buckled. He felt his Kimber being removed from the hip holster, and then the original speaker was standing over him.

  “Take him to the solitary cell,” the man ordered. Lucas winced in pain as a pair of men hauled him to his feet and frisked him, taking his knife, grenade, and flak jacket. They handcuffed his hands behind his back and then half dragged him down the hall, stumbling and disoriented. At the end of the corridor they stopped and threw him into a room with a barred window, the glass gone, the air putrid and stifling. The men stood aside and a tall figure entered, his tattooed face and shaved head identifying him as Crew.

  “Where’s the woman? Sierra,” he demanded.

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “We know you’re after the boy. Where is she?”

  “Boy? What are you talking about? I was after rum.”

  The man moved so fast Lucas was unprepared for the kick to his ribs. He grunted at the pain but made no other sound, and the man stood back and studied him before turning and making for the door.

  “You’ll wish you’d told me,” the man said quietly, and then the steel door slammed shut behind him, echoing off the walls with the finality of a gunshot. Lucas pulled himself to a sitting position, leaning against one of the rough brick walls, his mind working furiously as he waited for his captors to reappear, this time prepared to interrogate him in earnest. He had no illusions that he wouldn’t be subjected to the tortures of the damned, and mentally steeled himself for the ordeal to come, cursing silently that having survived everything that life had thrown at him, he would meet his end at t
he Crew’s hands over a fight that wasn’t even really his.

  Lucas closed his eyes and prayed that Sierra would honor her promise, and when he didn’t show come morning, would abandon her reckless crusade, but he knew her too well – this would be the end, not only for Lucas but for her, and likely her son as well.

  Chapter 39

  The mountains around the second geothermal plant were white with fresh snow as Duke, Aaron, Arnold, and Craig made their way up a trail to the valley where the hamlet and the hot springs that hosted the plant were located. Three-quarters of the way into their trip, a storm had blown through and dropped over a foot of snow, the relentless blizzard assailing them as they’d hunkered down overnight. Now, on the last day of their trek, the going was slow and treacherous, and what should have been a four-hour ride had taken most of the day.

  “Don’t want to be on this trail after dark,” Arnold said, looking to his left where a ravine dropped to the silver rush of a swollen creek below.

  “Shouldn’t be too much farther,” Craig assured him from his position in the lead.

  “So we spend the night here and then head back in the morning?” Aaron asked.

  “Assuming we make it,” Duke grumbled, unhappy at having to slog through the snow rather than enjoying the warmth of his new home in Pagosa Springs, a fire crackling in the hearth.

  An arctic wind off the mountain carried with it a mist of snow, the tail end of the storm lingering like a bad taste. Craig braced himself against the onslaught, the cold burning his exposed cheeks, a bandana tied over his nose and mouth like an old Western bandit to shield them from the worst of it.

  “This sucks,” Duke added as he lowered his head, his eyes slits, his appendages freezing in spite of the extra layers he’d donned. He’d spent too much time in the Texas sun – the cold affected Aaron and him more than the pair from Shangri-La, who were accustomed to the vicious winters of the New Mexico mountains.

  “No country for old men,” Aaron joked, his voice deadpan.