by Justin Bell
Several meters away a single dirt road led into the remote facility, overgrown with thick, green trees which surrounded the entire grounds. Two men stood at the mouth of the dirt road, also carrying rifles, both of them toting Russian made AK-12 automatic machine guns, hanging from their shoulders on taught leather straps.
Jeremiah drew back from the trees and onto the street, slipping his night vision binoculars back into one of the thick pouches of his tactical vest. He glanced behind himself at the four ATVs parked on the street behind him. They’d driven them twenty-nine miles, then stuck them in neutral and pushed them the rest of the way to maintain noise discipline and keep their approach nice and quiet. It seemed to have worked.
The four-wheeler closest to him still had the box trailer attached, and the rest of the team had drawn away from it, trying to stay in the shadows.
Jerry walked towards them, directing Phil and Clancy to approach. “Two sentries. Both with automatics, though their ammo doesn’t match ours, so we won’t have a lot of shots even if we grab their mags. If you run out, grab their rifles and use them.”
Greer nodded. Phil remained captivated but motionless.
“They’re close enough to the trees, but there’s another guy by the van. It’ll be tough to get through all three of them without raising an alarm. But I think that’s okay.”
“So the plan’s the same?” asked Greer.
Jerry nodded. “Hold tight.”
He broke away and walked over towards Angel who stood by another grouping of trees with Max and Brad flanking him.
“You ready for this, Hermano?” Jerry asked, using Angel’s own term of endearment.
“Oh yeah, I’m ready,” Angel replied. The SIG 522 was clutched in his right hand, and for all of his complaining about the pathetic .22 caliber rounds, he’d grown familiar and accustomed to the weapon. A black backpack was pulled tight over his wide shoulders as well. To his right, Max stood, the cool steel of his revolver pressing into his back, and Jerry placed a comforting hand on his shoulder.
“I don’t want you firing that thing unless there’s no other way, you got it, little man?”
Max nodded.
“At this point you could just as easily hit your mom or your sister, and you don’t want that.”
Max shook his head.
“What about you, buddy?” Jerry asked, turning towards Brad. “You saved the day. You got us here. You need a gun? Want something to defend yourself?”
Brad actually thought about it for a moment, but after a short shift of silence, shook his head no.
“I’m good,” he whispered.
Max remembered their conversation about his parents. About his brother. About everything that led up to this moment. A few days ago, Max would have thought his friend was weak…a wimp for not wanting to use a weapon. But today, he couldn’t help but respect the strength his young friend had. Strength of convictions even in the face of what they were about to deal with. Max decided at that point that Brad was a lot stronger than he was and that there were different ways to be strong. It was something that he hadn’t thought much about in his first twelve years of life, but with everything going on, he’d grown up a lot in a very short period.
“I’ll get your back,” Max said, nodding to his friend. Brad smiled. For some reason Max felt quite protective of his friend. Brad had risked his life to follow the path of his mom and sister and had walked thirty miles back to report what he found. Max owed him more than he could admit, even to himself.
“So the plan stands,” said Jerry, talking to all three of them. “You all remember how we designed it?” All three of them nodded the affirmative and Jerry nodded back. “Good,” he said. “Excellent. Let’s get this done.”
***
“Where did we get these things, anyway?” one of the men standing out by the dirt road asked, lifting his AK-12 and looking it over. He could barely make out the sleek shape of the weapon in the dimming light, but he’d remembered just how state-of-the art it had looked when Brody handed them to him and Hank a few hours ago.
“Who the hell knows,” Hank said. “Brody’s got contacts all over the country. Demon Dogs in all corners of America, man. Maybe even international.”
“Wherever he got ’em, they’re pretty boss.” He shouldered the weapon and cradled it with the other hand, mimicking a barrage of automatic fire, shaking the weapon as if it were discharging 5.45 millimeter rounds at 700 rounds per minute.
“Quit screwing around, Greaser,” Hank muttered. “What are you, twelve?”
The slight rustle of leaves behind them surprised Hank, and he spun as he was talking, letting the words trail off, not really expecting to see anyone but curious as to what was making the noise just the same. Jerry moved on him quick and quiet, his night vision goggles bathing the man in a pale green hue, magnifying the shocked expression on his face to almost comical levels.
A swift elbow shot forward, drilling Hank between the eyes, snapping the bones in his upper nose. As he dropped, Jerry helped him to the ground.
“What was that?” Greaser asked, and he started to turn as well, but the ex-Army specialist was already to his feet and lunging forward. He drove a fist into his solar-plexus, blasting hot air out into the cool night, then spun him over his hip, sending him smashing head-first into the hard ground. One more swift punch to the temple and both of them lay prone and motionless on the ground.
“Greer, now!” Jerry whispered and Greer moved forward, pushing the ATV and box trailer as he walked, groaning as he did. Pain tugged at his stomach wound, still fresh and tender, but he pushed through the pain and with Phil’s help at the other end they maneuvered the four-wheeler to the mouth of the dirt road, just far enough beyond the trees to keep it from the view of the man standing by the van.
“We’ve got just a few minutes to make this work,” Jerry whispered to the other two. “We’ve gotta get this right the first time, okay?”
Greer and Phil both nodded.
“Got the bungee cords?”
“Yeah,” Phil reached into a sack on the side of the ATV and produced a handful of thick, canvas-covered bungee cords. Jerry started wrapping them around the handle bars, slinging his leg over the seat and looking down the front of the ATV, scowling at the trajectory from where they were to where he wanted to be.
“All right. Looks good.” He patted a pouch on his vest and felt what he was hoping to feel inside, then kicked on the ATVs ignition.
The engine was deafening in the silence of the night air, a loud and long, rumbling roar of sound, splitting the quiet with an aggressive, shouting grumble.
“What the—” shouted the man by the van as the twin headlights blasted to life, bathing him in twin white orbs, bracketing him there against the side of the vehicle, his hand moving up to his face. Jerry could hear more shouting inside the warehouse as well, the stark realization from the inhabitants therein that something was clearly not right.
He drew in a breath and made a few more twists of another bungee cord, wrapping the throttle tight to the handles, the ATV screaming in his grasp until he jumped off and let go.
Like a possessed all-terrain vehicle version of the classic King novel Christine, the unmanned four-wheeler charged forward from the mouth of the road, leaping over rocky terrain, the handlebars tied straight with multiple taught bungees.
“Stop!” shouted the man standing next to the van, bringing his own weapon up and around. He fired a swift burst of automatic fire at the lurching vehicle. From the angle he was viewing it at and in the low light, he couldn’t tell it was uninhabited. Reaching into his vest pouch, Jerry pulled out a trigger mechanism, a small post of metal that fit into his hand with an angled lever system that he curled his fingers around.
“Time to put that combat engineer training to good use,” he whispered as the roaring, leaping ATV veered down on the warehouse entrance, tugging the bumping and tilting metal trailer behind it. He plunged his fingers together, squeezing the mechanism,
both halves clamping together with a satisfying punch.
Almost immediately a muffled whump echoed from within the trailer, followed a millisecond later by a piercing, blinding blast, splitting the metal, searing through the narrow surface of its walls and exploding into a white-hot bloom of fire and light. Metal shrapnel sheared away from the trailer, spinning in wide arcs around the makeshift explosive, and as Jerry watched, he saw a large chunk cut through the man with the weapon just before a flaming piece of wreckage struck the van and ignited the dried grass just beneath it.
“Oh, this is gonna be good,” Jerry whispered to himself. “It’s go time, boys.”
Not far away, as soon as the ATV engine roared to life, Angel slapped the two boys on the back.
“Our turn!” he shouted, and they darted through the thick growth of trees, twisting sideways around trunks and hopping over roots as they moved fast and quiet through the woods around to the right side of the warehouse. They broke through the tree line and angled for the loading dock just as the trailer blasted apart, bathing the entire complex in a swift flash of white illumination.
The momentary light helped situate them and they adjusted their path, cutting in a bit tighter and running straight for the concrete dock ahead. As fire rose into the sky from the blown-apart trailer, ambient light from the flames shone their way and they followed their designated path towards the freezer door. Jerry had described the interior of the building as best as he could remember it, but it had been a long time since he had visited the facility. Fortunately, though, the way in which storage warehouses were set up was pretty much universal, and Jerry’s descriptions had been spot-on.
Angel’s backpack bumped against his curved back as he ran, the SIG tucked tight in two hands, the boys charging just ahead of him. Angel drifted back slightly so he could adjust and fire if any unexpected interference arrived, but so far it had been clear sailing. With the explosion out by the front door, he suspected the attention of the gang would be drawn there and that the plan might work even better than he thought.
“Move, move, move!” Angel whispered as they approached the dock and the boys scrambled up onto it, with Angel vaulting up just behind them. There was a corrugated metal door pulled down tight with a latch and padlock sealing off the freezer on the other side.
“Max, the lock,” Angel said, and Max took a step forward, bringing his revolver out. He pressed the barrel close to the padlock and fired, the pop of the pistol mixing with the sudden exploding chatter of weapons rattling from the tree line. Angel knocked free the broken padlock and yanked up the sliding door.
“Watch out!” a voice shouted from inside and Angel dropped back and away as a group of echoing gunshots went off inside the freezer, just behind the plastic slats. The slats twitched and lunged as the gunfire chewed through it, while Max flattened against one narrow ledge of wall, Brad and Angel against the other.
“Two of them in here!” Winnie yelled from inside the freezer, and Max’s heart warmed with the sound of her voice. He never thought he’d be so happy to hear his sister’s trademark screech. Angel twisted around the edge of the wall and fired, keeping the SIG aimed high to avoid the prisoners sitting on the floor. He heard the slap of the bullet punching through the flaps, but then just a shrill whine of harmless ricochet. Max peeked around the corner, seeing his mom and sister sitting there, with two formless shapes looming above them, concealed by the slit curtain, and a series of swift bangs seared back towards him.
“Mom!” he shouted, dropping down in a kneel by the edge of the wall. “Coming at you!” He swung his arm around the ledge, letting the pistol skim the floor into a clumsy end-over-end bounce across the floor. Rhonda grunted and turned towards it, relaxing as she felt the reassuring weight thump into her left leg. Looking up at the guards, they continued firing out at the open door and she twisted around, grabbing the pistol with the two hands bound behind her back. She bent forward and turned away from the guards, then pulled the trigger three times, bright flashes chased by barks of gunfire.
One of the guards shouted and back-pedaled, and Winnie pushed herself to her feet and leaned against the wall behind her. Just after the third shot she charged forward at the other guard, lowering her shoulder and barreling into his chest, knocking him backwards. His gun hand sprang upwards and pulled the trigger, shooting two slugs into the ceiling.
“Go, sweetie, now!” Rhonda yelled and Winnie turned, extending her hand to help her mother stand. With the gap in the shooting, Angel came around the wall and let three rounds fly into the shrouded form of one of the guards, who grunted and twisted away, falling backwards.
Winnie helped Rhonda to her feet, and they both scrambled towards the door as the second guard moved in towards them, but Angel turned and fired again, the second guard jerking, then stumbling off towards the right. Angel pulled the trigger a few more times, but the firing mechanism clanked on an empty chamber. Out of ammunition.
“Mom!” Max shouted, lunging forward and wrapping his arms around Rhonda’s neck as she emerged from the freezer. She grunted and coughed, a laughing sob escaping her pursed lips. Her shoulder raged in pain, an inferno of agony, but she pushed past it, lowering herself to return the half embrace, even with her hands behind her back.
“Family reunion’s over!” a voice shouted out near the pickup truck and Rhonda spun to look, seeing another approaching Demon Dog, this one with an M4 in two hands aimed right for them. Rhonda still had the pistol clutched behind her back, but if she made any sudden moves to try to turn it towards the gunman, she knew he wouldn’t hesitate to fire upon them.
“Just sit where you are,” he growled. “You’re going nowhere—”
The shattering blast startled Winnie so much she shrieked and leaped away from Angel, who had come forward. The ex-convict had stowed away the empty SIG, but had replaced it with the Remington shotgun stored away in his backpack. Smoke spiraled from the barrel as the gunman slammed flat on his back two feet back from where he’d been standing, his weapon scattering away over the dirt.
“Take the gun, Max,” Rhonda said, turning her back towards him, and he slipped it from her two-handed grasp. She turned back towards him. “Thank you for coming for us.”
“Thank Brad,” Max said. “He risked his life to save you guys. It was all him.”
Rhonda and Winnie flashed him two sparkling smiles and leaned over, giving him a peck on each cheek. He flushed and looked away as the low rumbling of the pickup truck engine throttled to life.
“Kisses later!” Angel shouted. “Truck, now!”
***
The explosion lit the area in front of the warehouse for a split second, an instantaneous supernova, splitting the dark night with pure white brilliance, chased by the rolling yellow glow of flame. Windows shattered across the warehouse and just like that the sky was alight with the stuttering snaps of automatic gunfire.
The man carrying the weapon by the panel van started to pick himself up as two others emerged from the front door of the facility, moving to join him. Flames beneath the van caught something, and the vehicle disappeared under a shuttering, violent slam, splintering the polished black metal of the van, ripping it apart and spraying metal shards in a wide circle around the source of the explosion. All three Demon Dogs vanished inside the billowing ball of fire and mixed tendrils of smoke like an ephemeral octopus made of flame.
Dirt sprayed into the air as gunfire rained back at the men near the mouth of the access road and Jerry pulled back into the trees, leaves dancing and tree trunks shattering under the renewed onslaught.
“Okay there are more of them in there than I thought,” Jerry said. Greer moved towards him, one of the liberated AK-12’s in his hand, and he aimed towards the front door where a small group was starting to form. Brickwork blasted apart as he fired, but he didn’t hit anyone and they lurched backwards, scrambling for cover.
“Phil, how are the others doing?” Jerry asked, turning back to look towards the elder Fraser. He h
eld a pistol in his hand but was back from the edge of the road, looking towards the loading dock.
“They’re in a stand off!” he said.
“Not good,” Jerry replied. “We’re severely outnumbered here!” As if to reinforce this point, another barrage of return fire stitched up rooster tails of dark dirt just to his right, sending him sprawling left to avoid the burst. Dropping to one knee, he brought his weapon up and around, sighting down one of the broken windows where he saw a shadow shift on the other side, then pumped three quick shots. Another narrow shard of glass exploded and the shadow behind sprang away. Jerry thought he’d heard a shout of pain, but he wasn’t sure.
“They’re coming out on the left side!” Greer shouted, taking careful aim and firing with the AK-12. After a swift burst took down one Demon Dog, the weapon clicked empty and he ejected the magazine.
“Here,” said Jerry, tossing another magazine towards him. “Guards had some stashed!”
Greer snatched it out of mid-air and slammed it into his weapon, then swung out from behind a tree and opened fire again. An approaching gunman was caught out in the open ground and spun down to the grass.
“That guy got a little too close for comfort,” Jerry said, rattling off another handful of shots.
“They’ve got a gunman heading for the dock!” Phil shouted, aiming his pistol. There was a lone figure running low to the ground towards the pickup. “I think they’ve got ’em!” Phil finished. “I see Rhonda and Winnie out on the dock!” He fired at the gunman but saw no indication of him being hit. As he watched, the man with the weapon approached the dock and lifted his weapon, but a loud bark of a shotgun blast took him off his feet and he fell a few steps backwards on to the ground. Angel emerged, his shotgun smoking.
“Angel got him!” Phil shouted, turning towards the other two. “He’s heading towards the truck!”
