Stand Your Ground

by William W. Johnstone

  Baldwin drew Stark and Kincaid over to one side, ignoring the glare that Alexis directed at him as he did so. Lowering his voice so that only the two of them could hear him, he said, “It looks like the prison is under attack.”

  “By who?” Kincaid asked.

  “A damned army, from what Cambridge told me. I sent him and Bert Frazier to check out the trouble in Fuego, but they didn’t make it that far. They ran into a bunch of trucks and pickups headed this way. There’s an armed force about to—”

  From outside came the roar of an explosion, loud enough to make most of the people in the room jump. A panic-stricken Travis Jessup ran toward the glass entrance doors, but a couple of guards blocked his way. He looked out past them and yelled, “They’re shooting out there! The prison is being invaded!”

  Kincaid looked at Stark and said, “Rahal knew this was coming. That’s why he acted like he did.”

  The tall, bearded sound technician said, “Yes, he did.” He reached under the bush jacket he wore to pull out a pistol, which he pointed at George Baldwin and fired.

  Phillip Hamil had hoped to get closer to the prison before his force’s approach was discovered, but fate had intervened. Since Hamil was not one to question the workings of fate, he assumed Allah had a good reason for allowing the encounter with the prison van.

  It didn’t really matter anyway, he told himself. The infidels would have known soon enough that their day of judgment had arrived.

  The men in the pickups and cars, the quicker, more maneuverable vehicles, struck first, charging the fence and the guard installations and peppering them with machine-gun and small-arms fire.

  That served its purpose, which was to draw out as many of the guards as possible. As they gathered at forward positions to fight off the attack, Hamil ordered the big guns brought up. They were D-30 122 mm Howitzers, Soviet armament captured in Afghanistan forty years earlier, and despite their age they had been well-maintained, and functioned flawlessly.

  Disassembled and shipped to Mexico by circuitous routes, the guns had been smuggled into the United States over a period of months by the cartel allies of Hamil’s cause. They had been put together again in remote, camouflaged locations hidden away as much as possible from satellite surveillance.

  It helped that the organization had tendrils in the NSA and the Department of Defense, the same as it did in every other area of the federal government. Not sleeper agents, not exactly, because they were active operatives working against American interests under the cover of being part of the government. Not many dared question the fact that so many Muslims were now part of the military and most governmental agencies. To do so would be politically incorrect, not to mention career suicide in a Democratic administration, which was all Washington had anymore.

  If any hint of what the organization had planned was about to come to light, there were agents in place to snuff it out right away. Hamil always smiled when he thought about how the Americans were already teetering on the brink of annihilation—and most of them had no idea of their peril.

  Who had time to think about such things when there was so much celebrity gossip to keep up with?

  Because of the Americans’ unwitting complicity in their own destruction, Hamil now had these big guns mounted on the backs of heavy trucks, and as they rumbled up and took their places and their crews began the process of loading the guns and zeroing in on the prison, he was filled with a vast sense of satisfaction.

  One of the men called to him, “We’re ready, Doctor!”

  Hamil nodded solemnly and said, “Then in the name of Allah . . . fire!”

  The plastic gun—because that was what Kincaid was sure it was, probably taken apart before Joel Fanning came into the prison and then put back together while the sound tech was in the bathroom or something—popped as it went off. The report wasn’t loud, wasn’t threatening, but the rubber projectile the weapon fired would have killed Baldwin if it had hit him in the right place.

  Luckily for the warden, Kincaid had reacted with instinctive, blinding speed and rammed his body into Baldwin’s, knocking him aside.

  The rubber bullet still struck Baldwin, but it thudded into his shoulder rather than ripping into his throat and maybe severing the jugular. Baldwin grunted in pain, stumbled, went to a knee.

  Fanning tried to bring the gun to bear on Kincaid, but he was too slow. Kincaid swept his left arm up, caught it under Fanning’s right forearm, and thrust it toward the ceiling.

  At the same instant, Riley Nichols snap-kicked the side of Fanning’s left knee, breaking it. Fanning started to yelp in pain, but the sound barely got started before the side of Kincaid’s right hand slashed across his throat, crushing the larynx and causing him to gasp futilely for air as he collapsed to the floor.

  Fanning’s struggles lasted only a few seconds before a grotesque rattle came from his ruined throat. His body went lax.

  “You—you killed him!” Alexis Devereaux cried in shock and horror.

  “That’s what he had in mind for us,” Kincaid replied curtly. “He was working with that bunch out there.”

  He turned to Baldwin but saw that Stark was already helping his old friend. Stark helped Baldwin to a chair and pressed a handkerchief to the blood welling from the warden’s shoulder wound.

  More explosions hammered the prison. Kincaid felt the floor tremble under his feet. He scooped up the plastic gun Fanning had dropped and ran over to the entrance. The sliding doors there were thick, bulletproof glass, and through them Kincaid saw a holocaust of smoke and fire as shells screamed in and pounded the compound’s outer perimeter.

  The fence was already a tangled mess of wire. The concrete barriers designed to stop car and truck bombs were no match for artillery. They had been reduced to rubble.

  A lot of good men were dead out there, Kincaid knew, but then he shoved that thought out of his mind.

  If any of them were going to survive this attack, they had to act now.

  He swung around to look at Stark and Baldwin and said, “We need to fall back to a more secure position.”

  Baldwin’s rugged face was pale and drawn. The handkerchief Stark was holding to the wound was already soaked with blood. But Baldwin nodded and said, “Yeah, this part of the prison wasn’t designed to stand up to an onslaught like that.” He paused, then added bleakly, “I’m not sure any of it was. That’s a damned artillery barrage!”

  “What is going on here?” Alexis Devereaux screamed. Travis Jessup stood to one side, microphone dangling forgotten in one hand as he blubbered in fear.

  Riley was the only one of the visitors other than Stark who seemed to be keeping her head. She had the camera running, in fact, documenting the desperation in the prison’s reception area.

  “I can tell you what’s going on here, Alexis,” she said coolly. “Abu Rahal’s buddies have come to get him out of jail.”

  “You don’t know that,” Alexis responded in a shrill, strident tone. “You can’t make such an accusation. That’s racial profiling—”

  “Why don’t you just shut the hell up, you stupid bitch? You couldn’t see the truth if it came up and bit you on the ass—which it’s probably just about to do!”

  Kincaid grinned. His admiration for Riley Nichols had just gone up yet another notch.

  “The lady’s right,” Stark said. “This is a terrorist attack, plain and simple. I don’t know how they got a blasted army together in the middle of West Texas, but those are fanatical Islamic terrorists out there, and their goal is to kill all of us and free their friends. That’s the only explanation that makes any sense.”

  Alexis had been opening and closing her mouth like a fish. She struggled to regain control of herself with a visible effort and then said, “It can’t be. It must be right-wing nutjobs! A militia! The—the Tea Party!”

  “Now she’s hysterical,” Kincaid said dryly. “But we won’t leave her for them to find. Let’s go.”

  Baldwin looked at Kincaid with narrowed eyes an
d said, “You know what you’re doing, son. You’re in charge.” He lifted his weak voice so the handful of other guards in the room could hear. “Kincaid is in charge, understand?”

  Kincaid hesitated. He didn’t want to be in command. He hadn’t come to Hell’s Gate to do anything except lie low and hope that someday the forces that were after him would forget about him.

  That wasn’t likely to happen, but after today it might not matter.

  The explosions were creeping closer to the front of the prison as the enemy’s guns got the range.

  “Mr. Stark, help the warden,” Kincaid said. He looked around, spotted a guard he recognized, a young man who appeared disheveled and shaken. “Cambridge! Are you all right?”

  Cambridge nodded and stood up a little straighter.

  “Yes, sir,” he said.

  “You’ve traded lead with those bastards. How many of them are there?”

  Cambridge shook his head slowly and said, “I don’t know. A lot. They’ve got machine guns and no telling what else.”

  “All right, we’ll talk about it later. For now, you take Ms. Nichols, Ms. Devereaux, and Mr. Jessup and head for the maximum security wing. Mr. Stark, you and the warden go with them.”

  Alexis protested, “I don’t have to do what you tell me.”

  Riley lowered the camera, took hold of Alexis’s arm, and steered her toward the door leading back deeper into the prison.

  “Right now you do, if you want to stay alive,” Riley said.

  Cambridge urged the still-sobbing Travis Jessup after them.

  Stark had Baldwin on his feet again. Baldwin asked, “Why the max security wing, Lucas?”

  “Because if we’re going to make a stand, that’s where we have the best chance of doing it,” Kincaid said.

  “That’s where the prisoners they’re after are being held.”

  “I know, but it’s also the best place for us to defend.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Round up as many guards as possible, break open the armory, and get ready for a gunfight. A big gunfight. And then we’ll move as many of the prisoners as we can, too.”

  “Thank God you said that, son. The inmates are my responsibility. We can’t just leave them behind to be slaughtered. And you know that bunch is going to kill every American they find in here, inmates, guards, whoever.”

  Kincaid nodded and said, “I know.”

  He had dealt with that kind before. They wouldn’t leave any infidels alive behind them. They believed in a scorched-earth policy.

  Another explosion rocked the prison as everyone fled. In a matter of moments, Kincaid thought, the softening-up would be over, and then a howling horde of fanatics would come pouring into the prison bent on red-handed slaughter. They used modern technology, but at heart they were the same medieval barbarians they had been a thousand, fifteen hundred years earlier. Their basic nature, the urge to kill those who didn’t believe as they did in as bloody a manner as possible, never changed.

  The Americans in Hell’s Gate wouldn’t go down without a fight, though.

  CHAPTER 27

  The word was slow to get out, but by the middle of Sunday afternoon it was becoming obvious that something had happened in the town of Fuego, Texas.

  There had been a few frantic calls from townspeople to relatives, frightening tales of armed men in the streets killing anything that moved. Those calls had been cut ominously short.

  The county sheriff had disappeared, along with several deputies dispatched to Fuego to investigate reports of a disturbance.

  The Texas Rangers had sent in a Special Response Team in a pair of helicopters, neither of which had radioed back in. No one had heard from the Ranger commanding the SRT, either.

  The news media had gotten wind of the puzzling situation, of course, and sent their own choppers to investigate. They had relayed back video footage of empty streets and several burned buildings that a quick Internet search identified as the locations of Fuego’s churches. What appeared to be a perimeter of armed guards had been established around the town.

  Several hundred people were visible from the air, huddled together in the stands at the football field next to the high school. They were being guarded as well.

  It didn’t take long for the pilots of the news choppers to realize they shouldn’t be flying over the town. Nobody had started shooting at them yet, but that could change at any second.

  They banked and flew away from Fuego as fast as they could.

  A short time later, Air Force jets arrived to establish a no-fly zone over the town. The order came directly from the Pentagon.

  In less than an hour, the question was on the lips of practically everyone in the country.

  What the hell was going on in Texas?

  The house was located in the rugged Palo Pinto Mountains, fifty miles west of Fort Worth. The only way to get there was by following a winding gravel road barely wide enough for one vehicle for more than a mile. Flanking the primitive road on both sides was an impenetrable tangle of brush, briars, poison ivy, stinging weed, live oaks, and post oaks.

  The house was low and rambling and appeared to be built of logs, but that was only the outer layer, to make it look rustic and help it blend in with its surroundings.

  Under the logs were thick concrete walls reinforced with steel beams.

  Inside, the rustic, hunting-lodge look continued in some of the rooms, including the living room with its massive stone fireplace. But other rooms were sleek and high-tech. Hidden satellite dishes provided access to the rest of the world. Surveillance cameras covered every inch of the hundred-acre property, which had a good creek running through it to provide water. Generators powered several freezers filled with more than a year’s worth of food, but enough game roamed the hills that a man who was a good shot could live for a long time just by hunting and cultivating a small, hidden garden patch.

  Colonel Thomas Atkinson was a good shot.

  He lived quietly here, reading, writing, watching old movies and television shows. He cherry-picked what he wanted from modern life and disdained the rest. Some people might think that made him hypocritical, but it just seemed practical to him.

  And he didn’t give a rat’s behind what people thought of him, anyway. If they wanted to figure he was a crazy survivalist whacko, then so be it. He knew the truth.

  He hadn’t turned his back on the world, but he only ventured out into it when he had to.

  Today might be one of those days, he thought as he stood on his front porch, a tall, rangy man whose deceptively lean form possessed a wolfish speed and strength. His graying fair hair was cut short, as was his beard.

  Atkinson held a cup of coffee in one hand and a buzzing cell phone in the other. The phone’s display told him who was calling.

  He brought it to his ear, thumbed the button to open the connection, and said, “Hello, Governor. I take it you know more about the situation than you did when you called earlier?”

  “That’s just it,” Governor Maria Delgado said. “I don’t know nearly enough. But something definitely has happened in Fuego. Something very bad.”

  “I was watching the news a little earlier. Sounds like the town’s been taken over by terrorists. Washington’s established a no-fly zone.”

  “Yes, and Homeland Security is going to throw up a cordon around the town.”

  “Did they ask you if they could do that?” Atkinson inquired dryly.

  The question brought a disgusted snort from the governor.

  “Washington doesn’t ask permission for anything anymore, Colonel, you know that,” she said. “It was established a long time ago that the Constitution no longer means anything. The president’s word is law . . . as long as he’s a Democrat.”

  “Dictatorship,” Atkinson growled. The word put a bitter, sour taste under his tongue. “Too many people just don’t realize it yet.”

  On the other end of the connection, Delgado sighed. Atkinson could practically see her
rubbing her temples in weariness.

  “That problem will have to be dealt with another day,” she said. “Right now we have what may be an army of Islamic terrorists that has invaded and captured a town, for what purpose we don’t know.”

  “Sure we do,” Atkinson said. “Fuego commands the only approach to Hell’s Gate.”

  “You’ve been doing your research.”

  “I believe in being prepared—just like the Boy Scouts.”

  Atkinson was about as far from being a Boy Scout as you could get. Career military, busted in the ranks time and again for brawling, insubordination, and ignoring direct orders. More than once, he had been perched on the razor’s edge of a dishonorable discharge. Only one thing had saved him.

  He got things done.

  Eventually he had learned to control the demons raging inside him and operate within the system just enough to thrive. His record of success in hot spots all over the world had been enough to elevate him to the rank of colonel without his ever having to kiss ass or mouth politically correct platitudes like so many other officers had done.

  Then the day had come when he’d walked away from all of it to retire to his native Texas, here in these rugged, tree-covered mountains, a place that was isolated yet within less than a two-hour drive from an international airport. Atkinson could get anywhere in the world from here and did so whenever a suitable job came along.

  It was almost inevitable that a maverick governor like Maria Delgado would eventually have a need for his services. Over the past couple of years they had become friends as well.

  Delgado knew that when it all hit the fan with the Feds, Atkinson was one person she could count on—and the feeling was mutual.

  “You need boots on the ground out there, don’t you?” he went on.

  “Yes. How soon can you assemble your team and be ready to move if I need you to?”

  Atkinson thought for a moment and then said, “We can be in position by nightfall.”

  “All right. By then we ought to have a better idea what’s going on there and what Washington’s reaction to it will be. If they’re not going to do anything . . .”