Against All Enemies

by John Gilstrap

  “And you’ll be dead,” Tommy said.

  “No, we won’t,” Boxers said. “Look at me, then look at you. Which one of us do you think has survived more battles?”

  Jonathan didn’t appreciate the interruption, but he did appreciate the thought.

  “Why do you want him?” Tommy asked. “You know, assuming I know what you’re talking about.”

  “We’re going to bring him to justice,” Jonathan said. “I put it that way to be one hundred percent honest with you. Whoever he is in reality, he’s fomenting traitorous activity, and he has to pay for that.”

  “He’s doing the will of the people,” Tommy said.

  “He’s doing the will of a few people,” Jonathan corrected. “I hate to keep harping on the same point but he’s doing the will of a precious few, all of whom are destined to end up dead or in prison. Mary tells us that you’re a smart kid. Tell me that this hasn’t occurred to you.”

  “There’s only one reason for secrecy,” Jolaine said. Apparently, she had a hard time dealing with any period of time that existed without the sound of her voice. “And that reason is to hide something.”

  “And who are you?” Tommy asked. Exactly the reason why she should have kept her mouth shut. Until that moment, Jonathan and Boxers were the only people in the room as far as he was concerned. Now, he was aware of a crowd, and Lord only knew what might come of that.

  “They call me She Devil,” Jolaine said.

  “Why?”

  “She Devil, you shut up, too,” Jonathan snapped. “That’s her name for the same reason that my name is Scorpion. The very rough translation is that it’s none of your business.” He paused to regroup, to change his approach.

  Jonathan stood from his chair and swung it around to sit normally. When his butt was back in the seat, he leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. The posture of a concerned father. “Maybe we got off on the wrong foot,” he said. “We brought you down off the mountain on false pretenses, and then we startled you when you came through the door. Nobody likes that.”

  “No kidding.”

  “But Tommy, I really want you to do some serious thinking here. Consider what your options really are. Let’s start with what’s not going to happen. We are not releasing you to go back up to the top of the mountain. That’s not in play. So your options are to help us and stay out of prison, or go to prison. In that context, I don’t understand why you’re not one hundred percent on our side.”

  “Because they’re my friends,” Tommy said. His voice caught on friends, and Jonathan remembered what Mary had told them about his youth.

  Jonathan let those words hang in the air for probably a full minute. Entire wars were won by young men who fought to protect their friends. God knew that loftier nationalistic ideals were nowhere on the horizon among junior soldiers once the shooting started.

  “Look at me, Tommy,” Jonathan said softly. It took awhile, but he waited for it. “I can’t tell you how thankful I am that I have never been in the position I’m putting you in. Loyalty is important. It really is. But for every man who finds himself in a tough spot, the time comes when he must ask himself what it is that he’s loyal to. Think about the mess in Washington. Whether you want to look at President Darmond or at either party in the House or the Senate, the reason why we’re in the crappy times we’re in is because those assholes are loyal to something other than the people they’ve sworn to represent.”

  Something sparked behind the kid’s eyes. Jonathan sensed that he had begun dancing close to the rhetoric the kid had been hearing up in the camp.

  “I don’t pretend to know what it is,” Jonathan continued. “Whether it’s their party or the hatred of the other side, or just plain greed, they have locked up our system of governance for reasons that have everything to do with themselves, yet nothing to do with us. Can we agree on that much?”

  Tommy seemed startled to be presented with an actual question that demanded an actual answer. He thought for a few seconds. “Sure. I can agree with that.”

  “Good. I’m glad. Then you can understand how people can become loyal to things and people and causes that ultimately have less to do with the greater good than they do with self-aggrandizement.”

  Tommy stared some more. Jonathan thought he saw tears. That was almost always the precursor to a breakthrough. He went for it.

  “Tommy, your friends are plotting bad things, and they’re trying to take you with them. That makes them not your friends. They’ve been using you.”

  Tommy shifted his eyes toward Mary, who was instantly on her feet. He stood, too, and as they embraced, the disappointment and embarrassment poured from the kid. At the sound of the soft sobbing, Jonathan looked toward Boxers, who had his arm—his hand, actually—draped around Jolaine’s shoulder. No one wanted to witness anyone else’s pain.

  “Listen to them,” Mary whispered in his ear. “Please listen to them. I don’t want you to come to harm.”

  A minute passed, maybe more. Finally, the kid found control. He kissed Mary on the cheek and pushed her away. “What do you want me to do?”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  “How accurate is this photo?” Jonathan asked. All of them—Jonathan’s team, plus Mary and Tommy—stood in a cluster around the screen of Jonathan’s laptop computer. Venice had uploaded a satellite photo of the top of the mountain.

  Tommy studied the image carefully. It showed a sheared-off mountaintop with all manner of buildings, mostly of prefab construction. “I can’t tell you building by building without really studying it,” he said, “but it looks pretty close.”

  “Take your time,” Boxers said.

  Tommy did exactly that, probably five minutes in silence to process all of the details.

  “Let me help,” Jonathan said finally. He pointed to the cluster of trailers in the lower, southeastern corner of the site. “These look like barracks to me. Is that right?”

  “Yes. That one there is mine.” Tommy pointed to one of the trailers in the image.

  “How are the barracks arranged? How many people in each trailer?”

  “Ten,” Tommy said. “Five to a wall. The latrine is at the end.”

  Jonathan noted the military term for toilet. “Showers, too?” he asked. The question had no purpose other than determining the relative size of what he was looking at.

  “No,” Tommy said. “The showers are here.” He pointed to a separate trailer. It made sense, when you thought about it. Running zoom pipes out of commodes was an order of magnitude less complicated than providing high-volume running water. To focus the showers in a single facility made a lot of sense.

  “Are you telling me that two hundred men all shared the showers in one little trailer?” Rollins asked.

  “We’re on shifts,” Tommy said. “Assigned times.”

  Much of what Jonathan saw in the rest of the image was fairly self-explanatory. Shooting ranges look like shooting ranges, no matter where they are, and the big tent is always the mess tent, both observations confirmed by Tommy.

  “What are those buildings on the top of the hill?” Jolaine asked, pointing to the middle-top of the screen.

  Dylan scrolled in closer, highlighting a series of twelve buildings, six to a side, flanking an access road, and each served by what appeared to be gravel walkways.

  “That’s officer’s country,” Tommy said. “Quarters and offices. That’s the motor pool right there.” He indicated a parking lot just to the north of the northernmost building.

  “Which one is Carrington’s?” Jonathan asked.

  Tommy said nothing for several seconds, then he sat taller in his seat and declared, “You’ll never get through to him. You’ll never get through the security.”

  “I find that hard to believe,” Jonathan said. His heart raced at the thought of the kid volunteering in a fit of pique the information he expected to be most difficult to wring out of him.

  “Multiple fence lines, each of them patrolled. One gate in
each fence, and they’re guarded by some serious soldiers. They’d as soon kill you as look at you.”

  As Tommy spoke, Dylan scrolled back up to about two hundred feet. The image moved, and then he dialed back in again. “These are the gates here, right?” he asked.

  Tommy stopped himself. He blushed and his ears turned bright red. He said nothing, but clearly he understood what he had done.

  “Let’s go back to the buildings on the hill,” Jonathan said.

  “I’m not talking to you anymore,” Tommy said.

  “I bet you’re wrong,” Boxers said.

  “Not now,” Jonathan said. The kid didn’t need to feel any more threatened than he already—

  The sound of vehicles racing up and stopping abruptly outside drew Jonathan’s attention. Rollins, who’d never left the window, said, “We’ve got company, people.”

  Jonathan darted to the window and as he saw the rest of his team coming to join him, he pointed to Jolaine. “She Devil, you keep an eye on Tommy.”

  Outside, two SUVs that looked remarkably like the one Tommy had driven pulled to a stop in the middle of the street and disgorged four people each for a total of eight. They all carried some form of AR-15 variant, and they headed as a group toward the door of the diner downstairs.

  “Shit,” Jonathan spat. “We’re in trouble. Mary, is there a back door from here?” He drew his Colt. Suddenly, eight rounds plus a spare magazine didn’t feel like nearly enough.

  “Only downstairs,” she said.

  The very downstairs where the armed posse was swarming.

  “Fire escape?” Jonathan asked. Surely even a burg like this had fire codes.

  Mary pointed to a room in the back. “The window,” she said.

  The whole building shook as the invaders slammed the door open and entered the diner.

  “She Devil, you take Tommy and head to the fire escape. Boomer, you and Madman are next. Big Guy and I will hold them off and join you.”

  “I’m up here!” Tommy yelled. “They’ve got guns! They’re going out the fire escape!”

  Rollins was closest, and he punched the kid in the head. The force of the blow should have knocked him out, but instead, it seemed to energize him. Tommy leapt from his chair and charged Rollins, knocking him off-balance. In a move that Jonathan found impressive, the kid grabbed Rollins’s gun hand with both of his own and twisted the pistol free.

  “Don’t!” Jonathan yelled.

  Tommy had the M9 in his hand, but he fumbled with the trigger.

  “Tommy!” Mary yelled.

  Outside, the pace of motion on the steps peaked. The entire second floor seemed to vibrate.

  Tommy’s grip settled on the pistol and he swung it toward Rollins.

  Jonathan shot the boy through the temple from a range of five feet. Through the pink mist of bone and brain, he saw a lamp shatter from the bullet that passed all the way through.

  Mary screamed, lunged at Jonathan.

  Jonathan swatted her away and pushed her to the floor. He kept her there with his knee planted between her shoulder blades as the apartment door flew open from a massive kick that actually cracked the length of the door panel.

  Jonathan saw a rifle poised to fire and he shot the face behind it. And the face behind that one. To his right and rear, Boxers didn’t have an angle on the door itself so he fired through the wall adjacent to the opening. More people fell.

  With his weapon up and ready, Jonathan rushed the door, emptying his remaining five rounds blindly through the opening. As the slide locked, he thumbed the mag release and dropped the empty from the grip. By the time it hit the carpet, he’d seated the spare mag and slammed the first of seven fresh bullets into battery.

  As he passed through the doorway into the hall, he didn’t even try to step around the first two bodies, but rather walked on them, on their torsos, for the best balance in an inherently unbalanced stance. He encountered two more bodies in the hallway itself, one clearly dead of a head wound, and the other writhing from a gut wound and a neck wound that pumped blood at an unsustainable rate. Apparently the vest he wore was not ballistic after all. Jonathan lifted the man’s rifle away and pulled two of his spare mags out of their pouches. He racked the bolt to make sure a round was chambered, and he double-checked the safety to make sure it was off. He noted that this was a civilian model of the AR-15, with no full-auto mode. He slung the rifle over his shoulder and stuffed the mags into his back pockets.

  “Call an ambulance,” the wounded man moaned.

  “Where are the others?” Jonathan asked.

  “Oh, man, I’m hurt. Please, get me an ambulance.”

  “You’re not hurt, you’re dying,” Jonathan said. “Where are your friends?”

  The light in the man’s eyes dimmed and then went out. Jonathan felt a tug. Killing people was never easy, always took a piece of you away, but watching them die carved a bigger chunk.

  “Did I get him or did you?” Boxers asked. Sometimes, Big Guy just pushed too hard.

  Gunshots cracked in the night outside, at first just a single shot, and then a sustained exchange. Jonathan heard pistols and rifles, and knew right away that they’d found the dead men’s friends.

  “Scorpion! Scorpion! We’re under fire. Black side off the red corner.”

  “Arm up,” Jonathan said, but Boxers had already slung two of the rifles. Rollins, meanwhile, stood in the doorway watching. He seemed stunned. “Madman!” Jonathan barked.

  “Leave him,” Boxers said.

  Yep. Jonathan switched his radio to VOX. “Scorpion and Big Guy are on the way,” he said.

  Dylan’s voice said, “Expedite. She Devil’s out of ammo, and I nearly am. If you button-hook to the red side, you should be able to flank them.”

  At the base of the interior stairs now, Jonathan charged forward toward the diner’s front door. “Are you and She Devil under cover?”

  “Affirm. Behind a Dumpster in the back.”

  “Stay there and stay down. We’re coming into position.” It troubled him that the shooting had subsided. Typically, that meant the enemy was making a move. “If you see a shadow up close, shoot it. It will not be a good guy.”

  Jonathan led with the rifle pressed into his shoulder, walking at a low crouch, fully aware that Boxers was two steps behind in the same posture. As he stepped through the door into the night, he swept left and right and found no threats.

  “Come out from hiding!” someone yelled. “We see you behind that container. Your friends are dead upstairs. You cannot get away.”

  “I don’t feel dead,” Boxers whispered on the air. “Do you feel dead? You don’t look dead.”

  Jonathan ignored him. Boxer got positively jolly during gun battles, and this one clearly was not over yet. In the distance, he heard an approaching siren.

  As they turned the corner to the left, his heart rate increased. The four bad guys had fanned out in a ragged line that ran perpendicular to his position, and they seemed to move with fair precision as they approached the Dumpster. Even in the dark, Jonathan could see the bullet punctures in the steel.

  “You take the two on the right,” Jonathan whispered into his live mike. There would be no warning, no challenge.

  Before Big Guy could acknowledge, gunfire erupted from the second floor of the diner—from Mary’s apartment. Enormous muzzle flashes strobed from the window. Eight, maybe ten rounds in rapid succession.

  Jonathan dropped to his knee and swiveled to confront the threat.

  “That was me,” Madman said over the air. “Check them, but I think I got them all.”

  Jonathan broke his aim on the window and pivoted back to the soldiers in the alley. None moved, all glistened. He and Boxers approached the sprawled bodies cautiously but deliberately.

  “Just when I think I understand Stanley, he goes and surprises me all over again,” Boxers grumbled.

  It took less than twenty seconds to determine that they were all dead. “We’re clear,” Jonathan sai
d on the air. “Four sleeping inside, four in the alley.” The sound of the siren grew louder.

  Dylan and Jolaine stepped out from behind the Dumpster. “That siren is the police,” Jolaine said. “We need to get out of here.”

  Jonathan turned and craned his neck toward the sound of the approaching emergency vehicle. He could see blue lights painting the facades of buildings at the end of the street. “Nope,” he said. “No time. Drop all firearms that don’t belong to you and gather on me.”

  “Hope you know what you’re doin’, Boss,” Boxers said softly.

  “Remember,” Jonathan said. He was still on VOX. “We don’t kill cops.”

  “You remember that I do not go to jail,” Boxers replied.

  Rollins cleared the front door of the diner at about the same moment that Dylan and Jolaine sidled up. Jonathan switched his radio back to PTT.

  “What’s the plan?” Rollins asked.

  “We’re gonna talk,” Jonathan said.

  “Come again?” Jolaine said.

  “Y’all welcome to the team,” Boxers said. “One thing about my friend Scorpion is he always keeps you guessing.”

  “What are we waiting for?” Dylan asked.

  “For the cop to decide what he wants to do.” The vehicle had stopped short of the diner, and now had turned its lights off.

  “I think he’s a-skeered,” Boxers mocked. “He’s not going to come to us.”

  “Okay, then,” Jonathan said. “We’ll go to him.” He looked to the sloppily parked vehicles. “You three take that one,” he said, pointing to one of the SUVs from the raiding party. “Drive down to the Batmobile, grab it, and then drive both vehicles back here.”

  “Why?” Rollins asked.

  “You know, Madman, I hate the why thing at times like this,” Jonathan snapped. “Just do it.”

  “What are you two going to do?”

  “The talking,” Jonathan said.

  Boxers chuckled. “Yeah, because that’s what I’m so good at.”

  “When you drive past the cop, he might try to stop you, but don’t stop,” Jonathan instructed. “Don’t threaten him, and don’t ram him, but don’t stop, either. Drive up on the sidewalk if you have to.”