I was finding that I was growing extremely weary of our long journey south both physically and emotionally. After being ousted from Olsten, Ray had made a somewhat off-the-cuff remark regarding our need to find a castle with a moat in which to reside, I took his words to heart. This was why we had come, with the blessing and consent of our entire group, to Florida. We were on the hunt for our castle, complete with moat, and I had an idea of where we could find one. Getting there however, was proving harder than I expected.
After a long night of creeping slowly along in our aged pickup truck in an effort to conserve fuel, and an equally long morning of searching for more gas, as we exited the highway onto a road that appeared deserted at first glance, I was disappointed to see smoke rising in the distance ahead of us.
“Oh great,” I said dejectedly to Claire and Jason who rode beside me in the pickup’s cab. “What now?”
Everyone was hot, tired, and ready for some much-needed sleep, and the last thing I wanted was another problem, or worse yet…a confrontation.
CHAPTER 3
The SUV and pickup truck full of fuel leading Gordon and Jeff’s Mustang screeched and skidded to a halt as the two armored personnel carriers blocked not just the roadway, but due to their size, any hope of using the road’s shoulder or drainage ditch that ran alongside it to circumvent them.
Jeff quickly slowed the Mustang and angled it to the left as both he and his father Gordon looked for avenues of escape on either side of them, but all they saw were walls of tangled vegetation.
The two trailing vehicles bringing up the rear of their small convoy angled up behind them creating a sort of V-shaped defensive perimeter around Gordon’s Mustang.
Gordon knew he and his boys were outclassed and outmatched. He watched in his side mirror as the three SUVs that had followed them from the interstate seal off their only potential escape route from behind. Two of the SUVs angled lengthwise across the road, each covering half a lane and the road’s shoulder. The third SUV stopped facing them, filling the center gap between its two counterparts, defending against any breakout attempt by Gordon and his men.
Armed men appeared through skylights in the rooftops of these SUVs, flipping up protective armored plates in front of them.
Gordon realized that these guys meant business. They weren’t any half-assed locals looking to steal some food or fuel – these guys were for real. He wondered where they had come from with such firepower, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that they had it and they were apparently willing to use it. He hoped they could just hand over the diesel they’d captured and be done with it.
But that was not to be.
The shooting started before he had even begun to consider how to approach the handover of the scavenged fuel. A projectile fired from the first armored vehicle landed just in front of the Billy and Jerry’s lead SUV and exploded. The front of their SUV jumped in the air, coming back down as it erupted into flames. Gordon watched in horror as his son Jerry fell from the passenger-side door out onto the pavement. The second armored vehicle chose this exact moment to open fire, ripping into the boy as he attempted to scramble for cover.
Gordon stared, frozen in his seat as his boy’s bloody body fell motionless on the pavement. There was no sign of Billy as the SUV continued to burn and be raked with machinegun fire, wavy lines of bullet holes being punched through its hood, doors and windows.
The second armored vehicle then swung its fire toward the pickup truck containing the diesel fuel, spraying the Mustang with several rounds in the process, none of which did much damage, but it forced Gordon and Jeff down in their seats for cover as the rounds opened up several holes in their windshield.
At the same time, the three SUVs behind them commenced firing as well, peppering Gordon’s rearguard vehicles with lighter, yet still intense machinegun fire.
The first armored vehicle launched another projectile that went wide of the Mustang and exploded near the road’s drainage ditch, but Gordon knew its intended target.
“We gotta move!” he yelled at Jeff. He grabbed the CB radio. “Get to the weeds!” he yelled, hoping that his boys could hear him over the intense machinegun fire, and that if they could, they could do something about it.
While he knew that his troops would fight to the death for him, that death would be quick in coming if they didn’t get their asses into gear. It was time for the general to lead his troops, and he now realized that he must lead them not just in victory but in defeat as well.
The all-encompassing fire both in front of and behind them – but especially from the armored vehicles – was so heavy, it meant that it was hard for any of his men to safely make their way to cover. Most of their vehicles had been made inoperable by gunfire, leaving them useless in transporting them to the cover of the thick undergrowth just 40 yards away. This meant that they’d have to try to hoof it. The suppressive fire of their attackers was just too much. But if they sheltered in place, they were dead for sure.
Before he had time to contemplate it further, another projectile from the first armored vehicle landed and exploded just yards from their Mustang. Shrapnel from the explosion ripped into the front of the car, killing the engine instantly.
“We’re dead in the water here!” Jeff yelled at his father.
The second armored vehicle had started concentrating its machinegun fire on the lead pickup that held the diesel fuel and that his young nephew Edwin had exited and now sheltered behind. Gordon was sure the tank full of diesel would ignite any second.
He took a breath, expecting the explosion and the loss of yet another family member; but instead, the firing from the destructive power of the heavy machinegun suddenly and unexpectedly stopped.
Gordon saw it as their chance – their only chance.
“GO!” he yelled into the CB. “GO NOW!”
* * *
“Idiot!” Jake Steins yelled, smacking the man firing the Stryker armored fighting vehicle’s Protector M151 Remote Weapon Station hard in the back of the head.
The man’s name was Doug, and he was a new recruit to Jake’s crew. He rubbed the back of his head where Jake had struck him. They’d picked up Doug just outside Jacksonville because he said he’d learned how to operate the Stryker’s weapons system in the army, which may have been true, but they sure as hell hadn’t taught him any common sense during his service.
“You’ll hit the fucking fuel tank, dipshit! That’s the whole reason we’re here!” Jake chastised him
Jake shoved Doug roughly aside, “Last time I let you do something I should have done myself. I didn’t survive the goddamn flu and make it all the way down here from Chicago to run out of gas and die in some bumfuck swamp, you asshole!”
Of course Jake was being overly dramatic, but that was Jake, and he was going to get his point across one way or another.
No matter what happened or how, it was never Jake’s fault. In fact, he was pissed already because he blamed his men for not getting this necessary fuel earlier in the day when they’d first stumbled across it. Jake’s Stryker armored vehicles were gas guzzlers, and while their highway fuel mileage had been decent on the way down from Atlanta – where they’d been forced to abandon their operations after coming into conflict with the city’s three controlling families – they were in desperate need of diesel to quench the metal beasts’ seemingly insatiable thirst.
Jake’s men had discovered the tractor trailer on one of their scouting missions and hauled the stranded driver off into the nearby swampland where they executed him. But they hadn’t had with them the siphoning equipment necessary to get the fuel out of the semi. Upon their subsequent report of the find to Jake, he had ordered the fuel-deprived Strykers safely stashed out of sight while his men gathered the requisite siphoning materials. It was at this point that he saw Gordon’s convoy headed toward the interstate and guessed what they were up to. Actually, it had been Ava, his right-hand woman, Latina lover, and planner for their organization who had pointe
d out the likely destination of the convoy and how best to handle the situation. Once Ava was done explaining what to do to Jake in private (so that he could eventually either take full credit for the success of the operation or blame her for its failure), he radioed his men and told them the plan as Ava sat nearby – just in case he left out any pertinent details.
The plan called for his first assault team comprised of three armored SUVs to circle around behind and observe the convoy from a distance, waiting for them to do the work of collecting the fuel. They would then push the fuel-rich convoy back toward the coast. Meanwhile, Jake, Ava, and the remainder of their crew would maneuver their armored vehicles into a concealed position along the roadside leading back to the coast. Then all Jake had to do was sit, the spider laying in wait for his prey to come to him and be snarled in his web. As soon as the convoy was within striking distance, he would maneuver his armor to block the road and bring their heavy-hitting firepower to bear while his trailing SUVs pinned the convoy in place.
The plan had gone perfectly until dipshit Doug starting going nuts with the M151’s 7.62 mm machinegun and threatened to destroy the entire reason for the plan in the first place.
By the time Jake got settled behind the controls of the weapon system, the flies he’d drawn into his web were already in the process of trying to escape.
* * *
There was still gunfire coming from the three SUVs that had blocked Gordon’s convoy from behind, but the armored vehicles sat quiet for the moment. That gave Gordon some hope, but it also concerned him. He wondered if they were setting him up, giving him just enough rope to hang himself by making a break for it. Then they could open up on him and his boys as soon as they were outside their vehicles and completely vulnerable.
But he instantly reasoned with himself. What choice did he have?
“Get to Barry, Ian and Andrew in the rear,” Gordon told Jeff. “I’ll see what I can do about Billy, Jerry, and Edwin up front.”
Jeff grabbed two automatic rifles from the back seat, handing one to his dad. “Good luck,” he said, looking at his father.
“You too,” said Gordon, nodding.
They had both known that one day it might come to this, but neither had expected it to be today.
Both he and Jeff shoved the Mustang’s doors open and rolled out low, taking cover behind them as best they could. Then they each broke for their intended targets, Jeff moving faster and with more agility than his old man. Machinegun fire was still ripping into the two rear vehicles of their convoy. He saw the doors to their SUV open, the steel-plated panels they’d welded to them doing their job in repelling the machinegun fire they were taking. Ian and Andrew jumped out of the vehicle and moved around to shelter behind it. Barry was already out of the pickup parked nearby and crouching behind it for cover.
The men quickly used their own weapons to flatten the last few vehicle tires that hadn’t already been shredded by their attackers’ gunfire. This lowered the clearance on their vehicles and in the process provided better cover and less chance of bullets ricocheting off the pavement and beneath the vehicles. All the men wore bulletproof vests, but of course these vests did not extend below the waist, leaving feet, ankles, legs, and other vital areas vulnerable to low-flying projectiles, and ricochets were often no less damaging than unobstructed bullets. Sometimes they were even more dangerous due to the deflected spin put on a round as it changed directions or was altered in shape. This could give a projectile a wider surface area, a more angled trajectory or even break it into multiple fragments as it entered the body.
Jeff made it to his youngest brother Barry, who was pinned down behind the cab of the pickup and not returning fire. He grabbed the boy by the back of his t-shirt and literally dragged him along with him, raising his own assault rifle without really aiming and letting loose with a full magazine of rounds aimed in the general direction of the three attacking SUVs.
In seconds, the two men had made it to the better cover of the armor-plated SUV where cousins Ian and Andrew were holding out.
Gordon wasn’t having any such luck. His first stop was Billy and Jerry’s burning SUV. Just as he reached it, a renewed assault from the first armored vehicle sent a projectile hissing over his head. It stuck the Mustang a second later and blew it to hell.
Gordon didn’t let this stop him as he reached the wreck of the SUV in which his sons had been traveling just minutes earlier. Beside it lay Jerry, eyes open, dead on the ground. He quickly moved around to the driver’s-side door. Flames were pouring from beneath the hood of the vehicle, and the resulting heat was intense. Gordon tried to grab the door handle but immediately recoiled as pain seared through his hand at its red-hot touch. He used the lower portion of his shirt to grip the handle and yank the door open. Inside, he could see Billy slumped headfirst against the steering wheel, the side of his face burnt and bloody, the front windshield of the SUV smashed in. Gordon leaned Billy back in the seat as he prepared to unclip his seatbelt and slide him from the vehicle. But as he looked into his boy’s face, he could see there was no point. The young man’s eyes were open, staring lifelessly ahead, a jagged piece of steel protruded from one of them.
Gordon wrenched himself away from the horrific scene. Part of him desperately wanted to stay with the boy, but he had to get back to those in his family he still had a chance to help.
He ran as fast as his aging body would carry him around behind the SUV and across the short distance to the bullet-riddled pickup truck containing the diesel fuel.
There he found his nephew Edwin pinned behind the pickup. The boy was firing rounds that pinged harmlessly off the thick steel of the armored vehicles.
“We’ve got to go, boy!” Gordon yelled at Edwin. “Before that thing opens up on us again,” he nodded toward the nearest armored unit.
The other armored vehicle lofted a grenade over them. It arced high and came down right in the bed of the other pickup truck away from where Jeff had just pulled Billy. A second later, it detonated, tearing the rear of the pickup to shreds and leaving the vehicle nothing more than smoldering scrap metal.
The blast sent everyone on that side of Gordon’s convoy rushing for the relatively safety of the thick foliage lining the road’s edges. Jeff, Barry, Ian, and Andrew all bolted to the north side of the road, spraying rounds at the still firing SUVs as they ran. Just as they reached the road’s edge, Ian took a bullet to the right thigh, crying out in pain as he fell awkwardly onto the pavement. Barry and Andrew, not having noticed their fallen family member, continued down into the relative safety of the drainage ditch nearby. But Jeff saw his cousin fall and stopped to help. As he did so, from the corner of his eye, he could see his father and Edwin break in a crouched run from behind the fuel-filled pickup and head toward the opposite side of the road.
Just as they made the move, the second armored vehicle’s heavy machinegun opened up again.
In the split second that Jeff watched, he saw his cousin get hit and drop to the pavement. His father stopped to help. That was all he saw. He couldn’t wait to see if they made it to safety. Instead, he grabbed Ian, who was struggling to stand in front of him, around the waist, hefted him, and pushed him violently so that he fell forward down into the drainage ditch before them.
As bullets zinged off the pavement around him, Jeff dove headlong into the ditch behind Ian. Once there, Barry and Andrew helped him drag his cousin to relative cover behind a thick grove of palms.
* * *
A few minutes after the shooting stopped, and Jake’s men had secured the perimeter, the emperor himself emerged from his steel chariot. Across from him, his queen emerged from hers.
Ava had hooked up with Jake in Chicago back when he’d been a sleazy hood pulling small-change jobs. She was a good-looking girl searching for a man to take her places – instead, she got Jake.
The arrival of the Su flu had been the opportunity they both had been waiting for. For most people, the flu had been something from which to run and
hide, but Jake had embraced it as the chance to finally take what he’d wanted from those less willing and less capable of doing so for themselves. Ava had recognized this one strength in Jake, seeing a man that was willing to do whatever it took to get what he wanted in a world where fear reigned supreme. Jake may not have looked like much, but Ava had seen something in him, at least enough to take a chance.
The lovely Latina was different from Jake in almost every way except maybe in their lust for power and proclivity toward violence. But even the latter tendency was somewhat different from Jake’s. Ava usually only resorted to violence as a necessary means to an end rather than as an indulgence to be savored and enjoyed as Jake viewed it.
Jake was short and boney. Ava was leggy and curvy and almost as tall as Jake. Jake was pale and ugly. Ava was brown and beautiful. Jake was ignorant and instinctual. Ava was smart and savvy. Jake lived in the moment and for the moment. Ava was forward thinking and liked to plan. But both had guts of steel, and both were good with a gun and enjoyed what each gave the other.
Jake provided Ava the power she so lusted after and the ability to wield that power through the plans that she developed for Jake and his men to execute. And Ava gave Jake sex unlike any he’d had before, leaving him feeling like a real man – like the man he’d always known he was but had never been able to unleash until after the flu when his true colors would not only shine through but scorch the earth. And that’s precisely what he’d done since departing Chicago’s south side nearly a year earlier, leaving a swath of death and destruction in a march to the sea the likes of which Sherman would have been proud.
Jake watched as his queen gracefully exited the Stryker armored vehicle in her tight leather pants and black t-shirt. Even after sitting inside the Stryker’s stifling steel interior for over an hour, she somehow appeared cool and collected. Not a drop of sweat was visible on her Amaretto-tinted skin.
The Systemic Series - Box Set Page 81
