Winters wanted a drink; she was suddenly dizzy and nauseous. A drink would settle her nerves.
“So, my plan is a go?” she asked.
“It would be in your best interests for this to work,” the DA said quietly. “It’s your only hope.”
“Thursday, around noon.” Winters finished tapping out her message into the phone. “The media will be there, as well as up to a thousand or so from Memphis and Fort Smith. No, I did not ask them if they pulled a permit, that is not my jurisdiction. You can let local law enforcement know if you want, but I am just passing the info along. Sure. Yeah, please keep a lid on it until the last minute if you ever want another exclusive again. Bye.”
She hit end on her cell phone, smiling.
They decided that Angelica would stay behind with Harry, even though she could drive one of the trucks. She was homeschooling Harry now that the schools had closed down. Goldie had offered to go, offering that Rob’s father, her husband, had driven trucks for years, and they had ridden as a team set of drivers before Rob had been born. She offered up he was probably conceived in a rest area somewhere near Boise in an overnight lot.
Although Andrea was healing, she had not wanted to stay. She had been cooped up forever. Since Angelica was going to stay, Anna offered to stay and get the heavy equipment ready to unload things. She knew it would be a six hour round trip, that’d give her time to put the intercom on the front gate, along with some more of the motion sensors, and then she would wire those back up at the main farmhouse.
Everybody said their goodbyes and the convoy rolled out, locking the gates behind them. Jayson was already in route to the pickup point near Texarkana, but since he was going slower, the group expected to get there more or less about the same time. Everybody was rolling armed, with sidearms, AR pistols, and extra magazines. Everybody had their vests and radios… but none of them were wearing everything. It would be hard to explain what they were doing to a passing officer who saw them in load bearing equipment and armor plates.
Everyone was confident that enough time had passed that the Rich guy may have given up or had to have gone on home. None of them realized a team that had been called in by the DA had started pulling all property transaction records in the area. When they had found a newer purchase by a corporation instead of an individual, that had caught their interest. Going backwards, they found the formation of the corporation and finally figured out it was a group, all friends of Andrea Mallory, who had bought the farm, with the former owner on the paperwork as well.
Winter's plan was simple: leak the story to her contact in the press and covertly through social media, leak the address of Andrea Mallory, her husband, and the Weavers. They had not been interested much in the custom home builder and the model, but that was one mistake that would cost them dearly. Instead, their plan was to let the rabble do what they had done in cities all over North America. Give them a target and let them go wild. Fires, murder; nothing was off the table for her Antifa followers.
They all loved a good arson, though Winters had always kept her hands clean. She had been one of the silent informers, picking out targets, often political rivals or those who would not play ball in her rise to power. The Antifa goons were useful idiots as far as she was concerned.
Anna was working in the basement when the motion sensor went off, then the one that sensed somebody had driven up to the first gate. She checked her watch and saw it was almost too early for the group to have gotten back and her phone and radio had been silent. She grabbed her favorite AR10 and load bearing vest and ran upstairs. Before heading out the front door, she put her gun belt on, buckling it at the legs and her waist. She loaded up her custom race pistols before she took off.
“Somebody is calling from the gate,” Angelica said over the radio.
“Who are they and what do they want?” Anna said, grunting as she hustled to the side by side UTV, clipping her radio to her vest and plugging in her throat mic and ear wig. She put those in to hear Angelica say, “They’re asking for Doctor Mallory.”
Anna’s blood ran cold. “Get an alert out to the group, let them know and keep me informed. I am taking the side by side to the gate. Roscoe!” Anna yelled the last loudly for the big dog.
The front door opened and both dogs came out running at the sound of her voice. “Load up!” she yelled.
Roscoe got into the back, but Ranger decided he needed to be next to Anna on the passenger seat. She fired up the engine and took off down the road slowly.
Her cell phone rang, and she paused long enough to answer. “Hello?”
“Rob and I are together,” Steven said. “What are we looking at?”
“I have no idea. How far away from the farm are you?” She started to move again slowly, towards the gate.
“A half an hour, maybe less? Are you armed?”
“Yes, got my Lara Croft gig on, and I’ve got my favorite rock crusher with a dozen extra magazines on my vest.”
“You went heavy loadout first? That is so hot,” Steven said. “Listen, we’re calling the local and state police, just in case. I do not think they would freak seeing you in that getup, but they might. Tell them you were working on outfits or some shit.”
“I know what to do. Now let me get off the line so I don’t have somebody talking in each ear. I’ll leave the phone on and on speaker so you can listen in.”
“Be safe,” Steven said.
“I will,” Anna muttered, putting the phone on speaker, and dropping it into the top pocket of her vest. She put the pedal down, kicking up a rooster tail of dust and dirt behind them.
When she got closer to the fence, her jaw dropped. She started talking out loud.
“Looks like three dozen cars lined up along the road. People lined up at the front fence. Some look like they already got ahold of the electrified wire. Gate is intact. A group is standing at the front gate near the road.”
“Are you Doctor Mallory?” a man yelled, his voice cracking.
Anna hit the gate opener and the second gate opened. She drove through and stopped the gate where she did not have to close it all the way.
“No, I think you’ve got the wrong place,” Anna called back.
“Corporate documents put her residence here,” another man shouted.
“I know of Doctor Mallory,” Anna said loudly, “but I’m not her. Did you know her husband is a real estate agent?” she called.
“What?” a woman screamed, though she was the closest to Anna.
“Dr. Mallory’s husband is a real estate broker. They have a couple dozen houses all over the state. You should probably ask them because she isn’t here.” Not quite a lie, but not quite the truth.
“Her husband set up a real estate office in the nearby town, we know she’s here. Bring her out so we can talk to her,” a different man from the back of the crowd shouted.
Anna noted they were all armed: knives, sticks, machetes, unlit road flares. Anna whispered all of this down at her neckline where she hoped both the throat mic and the cell phone would pick up info.
“Who are you, and what do you want?” Anna called. “Do you have a representative?”
“We’re here for the murderous bitch, Dr. Mallory,” a woman shrieked.
Anna saw her, and realized she was the mother of one of Andrea’s attackers, the one who had caught a JHP to the brainpan.
“Well, sorry to disappoint you,” Anna said getting out with both Roscoe and Ranger following, heeling on either side of her. “But I’m not her and Dr. Mallory is not here. Now move along before we call the sheriff’s department.”
“We’re not leaving!” another man screamed.
Anna recognized him from the news. He was another face that was often interviewed after something the country thought was either race or privilege related.
“Well, I don’t advise you to try to come in,” Anna said, “and I guess we’ll leave this for law enforcement.”
“Bring them on, we’ve got almost a hundred and fo
rty of us here, with hundreds more coming in!”
“Let’s just shoot the bitch and burn the place down,” another shouted.
Anna tried to pick out voices as they started yelling, turning their blind hatred on her.
“Cops are incoming,” Angelica said in the earwig.
“Good, tell them the group is armed, and I just had some threaten to shoot me and burn the place down to get at Andrea. Tell 911 they are armed, in overwhelming numbers, and I’m feeling very threatened.”
There was silence from the earwig, then Angelica came back and said, “With that, half of this side of the state just mobilized. I also told them you were a gun girl and were prepared to defend yourself from murder.”
“Goody,” Anna said, getting back in the UTV and backing it up.
The dogs, fearing they were going to be left behind, had moved with her, following the side by side until she was behind the second gate. She hit the close button when people started trying to climb the first gate.
“Ranger, protect,” she snarled, backing up to a trench that had been dug out, and parking the side by side behind a spare pile of dirt that had been left between every other trench.
Ranger growled and got near her. She had thirty yards between her and the front gate. She was pulling out a couple magazines from low on her vest where they were harder to reach and putting them on the dirt berm in front of her.
“Do not cross the second gate,” Anna yelled. “That’s the only warning I’m going to give to you!”
A few people had climbed the first gate, but somebody had pulled up to the front gate with a pickup truck, dragging a chain behind it, while a small group rushed the second gate, and the inner fence they had just installed. They stopped short of climbing the second gate for a moment, trying to figure out where Anna had gone. It had almost looked like she had popped out of sight to them.
Roscoe let out a loud hunting bark, then jumped into the trench with Anna.
“Things are about to get loud here,” Anna said, forgetting the phone and throat mic were picking everything up. She was talking to herself, mentally psyching herself up for what she did not want to have to do.
“Ranger, protect,” Anna said, pointing to the trench.
Ranger did not want to get in the hole with the little female human, but he had been given a job to do. He jumped down, on the other side of his Alpha. The bigger dog seemed to be in a sea of calm, whereas Ranger’s nerves made him tingle, wanting to move. He did not get to play with the sleeve much anymore, but he loved takedowns. The sleeve was his second favorite thing to play with, the first being the smaller human boy he owned.
“Anna, police are saying they are ten minutes out, maybe a little longer,” Angelica said into Anna’s earwig.
“You and Harry get ready to run,” Anna said. “They yanked the first gate out with a truck, and they’re trying to cut their way through the second gate.”
“Are you…” The rest of Angelica’s words were lost as, from two different directions, the booms of gunfire overwhelmed her.
Anna flinched, getting dirt kicked in her face from a near miss, and started picking targets. A man was trying to rush her with useless bolt cutters. One shot, center mass.
The woman who had been screeching about her son was trying to climb over, a revolver in her hand. Anna looked for anybody else with a gun and saw a man with a deer rifle, trying to get her in her scope. She fired once, saw him topple backwards. Anna scanned the field again, like she would be shooting trap before the clay pigeons came out and decided if the lady with the revolver lifted it… she did. Anna let the third shot surprise her and the woman crumpled on the spot.
The gunshots did not even deafen her, it had been that way since somebody had fired at her. She was fighting tunnel vision, trying to scan for threats. No one was going to make it over the second gate, not while her and the dogs were there to stop them. Her shots had all been direct threats with weapons. She kept talking to herself, not realizing everyone could still hear it, including the 911 dispatcher that Angelica had on the line.
“Please don’t do this,” Anna begged as the mob who had been startled off from the first few shots had started reorganizing.
“They’re pulling back a second, but a larger group just joined them on the road,” she mumbled. “I see some kind of antenna going up over the brush piles, I can’t see what’s there.”
Another shot rang out and she flinched, feeling something hot burn the side of her neck. She slapped a gloved hand over it and pulled it back, bloody. Another shot rang out as she ducked, and it hit the dirt wall behind where she had just been.
“Time to move and mix things up. Dogs, to the left,” she muttered to herself. “Don’t seem to be shot too bad.”
“Shot?!” Steven and Angelica screamed from two different points on the map.
“Please ask if your friend requires medical attention?” the dispatcher asked Angelica.
“You should be rolling medical anyway; she’s a professional shooter and she doesn't miss, so she isn’t going to be the only one who needs help.”
“We are, just stay calm,” the dispatcher said as they heard Anna fire again, the report from outside and over the radio very clear.
Somebody outside started screaming.
Twenty-Five
Steven was almost in a panic, but Goldie had taken over for him on the drive back. They were the second vehicle the group had that was doubled up. Despite driving like the demons of hell chased her, she still was not going as fast as he wanted her to. His wife had her phone on speaker the entire time, so he and Goldie listened as she begged and pleaded for people to stop.
Her gun kept booming, over and over, and she kept screaming for people to get back. Steven almost lost his mind when Anna mentioned she was not shot that bad. Through their radios, everyone on the convoy had confirmed that they had press checked all guns and had hands on, ready to go. They all knew they were rolling into a gunfight and had called 911 to let them know they were headed in.
They were of course told to stay away and that the police were going to be blocking off access to the road. Nobody planned on being stopped, no matter what happened. As a reminder, they all had GoPros in their vehicles and they all pressed record when they were twenty minutes out. Dante and Steven both had cams setup on their AR’s as well, something Anna did with them often so they could capture the shots and she could critique their forms as well as watch how the gun was performing.
“We’ll get there, sugar,” Goldie said, patting him on the knee. “Watch this.”
She was driving an older Chevy suburban, Steven’s in fact. The back end and trailer were loaded down, but when she kicked the pig, it jumped. She passed both Rob and Dante to take the lead of the convoy. They had been in contact with the trucker who was slow rolling behind them. He knew what was happening and had no plans to roll through a gun fight, so he’d sit on the load until he knew it was safe to drop it off, or he’d take it back to his place. Either way, the money the group had been paying him to do odd jobs for them had gotten him caught back up on payments that’d been falling behind while the pandemic ruined a lot of the businesses he used to deliver for.
“Just hurry,” Steven said, seeing smoke and flashing lights in the distance.
Anna was regaining consciousness while two people in the trench with her were screaming. Ranger had one man by the armpit and was shaking him like a terrier shakes a rat. Blood was everywhere, and his shrieks sounded high pitched and desperate. He kept trying to swing something at the dog, but the dog was actually heavier than the man in skinny jeans with green hair.
Roscoe had had enough. When the smelly woman jumped in the trench with his human and kicked him, he almost ignored it. When she got a sharp out and poked him in the shoulder, he yelped, biting at the pain. When the woman turned the sharp towards his human who was gasping after something invisible had hit her in the chest, Roscoe decided he was done playing. Sharp or no sharp, nobody was getting one of
his pack.
Roscoe had leapt, knocking the woman sideways, almost halfway out of the trench. When she had turned, he had used his full weight to keep her from moving far and clamped down on her throat, his massive mouth almost wrapping all the way around it, and he bit. Bone, gristle, and skin just collapsed as the half Dane, half Mastiff ripped her throat out. Throwing her to the side, he went and looked for new targets.
“I’m ok, I’m ok, I’m ok,” Anna said, gasping, feeling like she’d got mule kicked in the chest, her breasts bruised from something that had hammered the steel plate she wore in her vest.
She turned and saw the dogs both finishing off their jobs. The man on the ground with a billy club was a mass of bloody ruins. He would live, but his face, neck and arm were ripped and shredded by the 140# King Shepherd. Anna, finally, was able to get her lungs to expand enough and took in a deep breath. Blood, shit, gunpowder, piss. None of the smells she had expected but knew in her heart would happen. For the first time ever, she had put her deadly skills to use on live targets, and it made her feel sick.
The police cars had come in from the edges of the attack from either side, but having a few officers try to push through the throng of people intent on murder was slowing them down, and Anna couldn’t see if the police had made it through. The crowd was now screaming from the second gate, and a lot of folks had lost their will to rush her with weapons when she had shot six of them dead and wounded half a dozen more. The dogs had had their own kills, after somebody had picked up the dead mom’s revolver, and put one right in center mass, hitting Anna’s trauma plate, knocking her back.
“Angelica,” Anna said into her throat mic, “I caught a round in the plate. I’m ok, but they’re massing to come over the fence. If you hear me start shooting again, I want you and Harry to run.”
“Run where?” Angelica cried.
“Anywhere you can. We’re about to be overrun and the police don’t have the numbers to stop this,” she said, coughing, expecting to see blood come out, but didn’t.
Behind The Curve-The Farm | Book 1 | The Farm Page 16
