Atlantic Island (34 page)

Each fired shot was deafening in the confined space of the stairwell. Theo's ears were ringing. Still he worked his way down, avoiding shots and firing when he could. There was no way to properly survey the situation down below, but he believed there were only a few guards in each direction. The Security Force had surprised him, but he had a sense that they still underestimated what they were dealing with. Or, perhaps, there was more going on outside the prison.
 

Passing the second floor, he picked up his pace and heard his men doing the same. The shooting above him had become less frequent. Either the attackers from the higher floors had been incapacitated or they had retreated. The Security Force at the bottom of the staircase had grown quiet as well. Theo didn't dare lean over to look but he was convinced the Force agents were still lying in wait. This was going to be very difficult.

He gestured and signaled assignments to the nine other weapon-wielding prisoners above and around him. Having the higher ground might be the only advantage they would get. With his men in position, Theo leaned over the rail. He saw flashes of motion below and ducked back without firing. From above him came a chorus of gunfire aimed at the ground. Then all was silent.
 

Theo ran down the rest of the stairs, his gun at the ready in case there were more agents waiting or reloading. There was nobody left alive at the bottom. A pile of bodies awaited him at the base of the stairs. All but the one agent who had fallen from above were from the lower group that had tried to attack them.
 

Theo knew how lucky they had been. He was preparing a congratulatory speech when he heard the clump of a body collapsing. He looked up at his men, seeing them clearly for the first time since the fighting began. The group in the middle, forced into hiding while the armed men protected them, looked worn, scared and frightened. Not at all battle-hardened warriors. Several of the prisoners at the top of the group were injured. Worst of all, Theo realized his count was coming up two men short.

"What happened?" he called up.
 

"We've got two down up here," called one of the men. "They're dead."

Kylee had seen plenty of gun battles on television and in the movies. She had read about them in books, preferring to read novels a shade more violent than those favored by her friends. None of that prepared her for the grisly reality of war.

She fired her gun and heard those around her discharge bullets at the same time. The helmets, fearsome though they appeared, were more for technological superiority than defense against attacks that Tiberius had probably assumed would never come. They proved to be weak spots in the Security Force armor. Two of the three guards dropped instantly with a startling amount of force. The third guard was clipped in the armor protecting his shoulder. He stumbled forward and starting shouting, "We're under attack! We're under attack!"
 

Joseph calmly picked off the screaming guard, silencing his cries. The damage was done. The other guards, alerted to the raid, rushed into action. Kylee heard her soldiers continuing the assault. She dropped to the sand and ran toward the advancing attackers. "Rebels!" she yelled. "Take this camp! No mercy!"

The poor unfortunate people living in the beach camp screamed as they found themselves caught in the middle of two heavily armed groups. The campfires flickered and threw off light in random arcs, making it hard for Kylee to see what was going on. Damn that sniper! His delay had cost them the remaining daylight, and the Security Force could see in the dark.
 

She saw people running every which way, and saw muzzle flashes to match the noisy bursts that destroyed the tranquility of the beach. She saw bodies fall and knew intuitively that they weren't all Security Force. She knew she had been an idealistic fool to think her side would make it through unscathed, like some kind of arcade game. This was no shooting gallery. They were taking losses even as they pressed forward and gained an advantage.

Kylee rushed a group of Security Force soldiers, their black suits barely visible in the dim firelight. She fired, taking down one of them, before the others turned toward her. She dove for cover behind a series of tents, seeing the sand tuft up where she had been half a second earlier. The Security Force was hesitant to shoot at the tents because of the civilians hiding there. This made the tents ideal hiding spots, negating the Force's night vision advantage.
 

She saw Joseph firing and knew from the lack of return fire that he had taken out his targets. She wondered who he really been in his old life before he was a man in his sixties vacationing at the Jersey Shore. Austrian military maybe? He had never let on, but kind, warm Joseph was a killing machine.
 

The gunfire continued all around her as she slid down to the end of the clump of tents for a better view. How much of the Security Force was here? The camp had been much better guarded than she had anticipated. She saw several families hunkered down behind the tents. "Stay down," she said. "We are putting an end to Tiberius tonight." The people nodded. They were scared but they supported what she was doing. That was enough to reinforce her convictions.
 

Kylee continued to fire any time she was sure she had Security Force agents in her sights. Shooting went on all around her, gradually diminishing. Was this going to be a total bloodbath, with one side wiping out the other? She regretted that she had yelled "no mercy" in the heat of the moment.

"We surrender!" called out a voice.
 

"Surrender! Surrender!" called several others.
 
The guns stopped their thundering. Kylee stepped out from behind a tent. She saw four Security Force agents with their hands raised. They had dropped their weapons. She wondered if they had run out of ammo.
 

She spotted Ryan near one of the surrendering guards. "Ry," she called, "take his helmet. Scan the scene. I don't want any surprises."

Ryan did as he was told, detaching the "death mask" from the nearest guard and placing it on his own head. He panned robotically from side to side, scanning the extent of the beach camp.
 

"There's nobody else," he told Kylee. "These four are all that's left."

"Strip their armor and any additional weapons," she told the rebels. "Cuff them. Jamie, come with me."

Kylee had a fleeting worry that one of the guards would make some kind of last show of effort, either killing one of them at the expense of his own life, or maybe committing suicide rather than being taken prisoner. Nothing like that happened. That was good. These guards may have done what Tiberius asked, but their loyalty hadn't reached insane levels.

"What do you want me to do?" asked Jamie.

"Just walk with me. We need to count our losses. Double-check the field before we clean up here."

Kylee thought if Jamie had pressed her further she would have given some kind of a story about Jamie's great attention to detail or maybe she would have said something harsh about Jamie needing toughening. The truth was, if she was going to have to find out which of her people she had led to die she wanted her best friend with her for support.

In all, thirty Security Force agents had been guarding the camp. Of those, her rebels had killed twenty-six and taken four as prisoners. The rebels, with less training, less knowledge of the terrain, and poor visibility, had three injuries and no fatalities.
 

Kylee wondered if she would recognize the faces under the masks from her time at the Security Force headquarters. Probably. Still, these were people who had gone along with Tiberius's orders no matter how extreme they had become. She knew that Menendez had organized those who would support the rebels back in the city. They wouldn't be among the dead here.
 

Kylee ran to the boardwalk and pressed up onto the raised surface with one fluid motion. "Citizens of Atlantic Island, you are safe now. Come here where I can see you."

Her rebels moved in around her after gathering up the guards' weapons, except for the few soldiers who were moving the prisoners to the boardwalk. The people living in the camp came out slowly, hesitantly, as if they expected this to be just another Tiberius trick. Gradually, the audience in front of her swelled. Kylee watched, greeting each new arrival with a nod or a smile.

"This battle you found yourselves in the middle of tonight is just the start of what we have planned. You are free for now, but you won't stay that way if we don't take further action. The rebels here who have saved your lives are people just like you who were forced out of their homes by Tiberius and the Security Force. Join them. Join us. Help us march on Atlantic City and remove the so-called Supreme Leader from his Palace!"

Kylee didn't expect that anyone would join. She knew these people were petrified of Tiberius and traumatized by the battle that had been fought around them. Yet a few were moving forward. Twelve men and three women joined her troops on the boardwalk and were handed weapons.

This was a very positive development. Exactly what she needed to be able to continue on to the prison. She hoped Theo was not having too much trouble with his part of the plan. She couldn't wait to see him again.

Theo found that keeping himself calm for the sake of his men was one of the hardest things he'd ever had to do. With two of their number dead and several bleeding onto the concrete, the men were losing confidence. Theo knew there was bound to be significant opposition in the lobby.
 

"Guys," he said, "I promise you we will come back for anybody we've lost. By the end of tonight the people of this island will have taken it back from Tiberius. That includes the prison. My friends are coming for us now, and we have to be the distraction that lets them come in guns blazing. If we don't move now and fight the Security Force down here the rebels won't have the power to get in and we will die here. Do you understand? We keep on moving." He hesitated a second to see if anyone would object. Whatever objections or concerns the prisoners had, they kept them to themselves.
 

Theo waved the men down to the floor, where they took what they could from the guards sprawled on the ground. The door to the lobby had not been modified from the building's time as a hotel, probably because nobody thought prisoners would get this far. The aluminum door had a small, wire-reinforced glass window. Theo moved his head in front of the window for only a second. He backed against the wall.
 

"There are Security Force agents running down the hall right now," he told the prisoners. "Get out of the way of the door. We are going to pick them off as they come in. Won't get us through everybody but it will thin the ranks a little before we move to the lobby."

"Like shooting fish in a barrel," somebody called.

"Something like that," Theo said.
 

He moved back in front of the glass and away again, quickly as possible. "They are coming. Guns at the ready. Three, two, one—"

The door slammed open. A procession of armed guards ran in, and the prisoners fired, taking them out one by one. Five guards had entered the stairwell and found death at the hands of Theo's new troops before the rest caught on and took positions along the sides of the lobby hall.
 

Theo set up a rotation at the door, moving the line of prisoners up one at a time to keep steady pressure on the guards. He ordered his men to be conservative as they fired. He did not want to run out of bullets. He wished he had had more military training- any training, really. His mind could not develop a strategic way to get through the lobby now that the remaining guards were in position.
 

After every prisoner had rotated through, Theo told the group to take cover in the stairwell. "Theo," said Wes, "what the hell do we do?"

"I've got a few ideas in mind," he said, hoping to stall for time. He did not want to admit that he had no clue. Maybe he could buy some time using the protection of the Security Force armor. Allow the men to make a run for it and… wait. He looked down at the bodies of the guards. So many had fallen victim to the prisoners that the bodies had begun to stack up like logs.
 

"Here's the plan," Theo said. "I want ten men to change into the guard's uniforms. I know some of the helmets were damaged by the killshots, and the uniforms are going to be messy, but this is the only chance we are going to have. The men in guard costumes are going to lead five prisoners, including me, out to the lobby."

He explained the rest of the plan as the volunteers got changed. He had expected to have to reason with the men or beg them to get them into the bloody uniforms. He could not have been more wrong. The prisoners, amped by adrenaline and motivated by the desire for freedom and the longing for their loved ones, stepped up right away. He ended up with more than enough men for the job.