Sic Semper Tyrannis (18 page)

Ted clapped him on the shoulder.  “Just like at the Freehold, brother.  Nothing to it.”  He turned and started to move away from the group.

“But those guys didn’t have machine guns!” hissed Erik at the retreating shadow.

“Neither did
you!
  Now go!” said Ted in an urgent whisper.

“Right,” muttered Erik.  He glanced back at the front of the store and saw three shadows appear.  From the angle, the Russians must have been standing on the roof, right over the entrance.  A shiver went down Erik’s spine despite the near stifling atmosphere inside the ransacked store.  He hurried as quietly as he could to catch Pinner and the rest of the group.

“Sir, we making a stand here?” asked the Indian when Erik rejoined them in the darkness at the rear of the store.

“No way in hell, Pinner.  We’re leaving.”

“What about Daddy?” said a small voice in the darkness.

“Don’t worry, honey, Daddy will be right back,” cooed Susan’s voice.  Erik could hear the pain through her words—she needed proper medical attention, and she needed it now.

“There’s a set of double doors to our left,” Erik said, motioning in the darkness with his hand.  He could barely make out the dark shapes of his friends against the barely lighter background.  “Everyone take someone’s hand.”  He found Brin’s and intertwined his fingers in hers.  Quickly he felt for the reassuring shape of his
katana
, strapped to his pack.  Satisfied the group was ready, he got into a crouch and walked as quietly as possible to the double doors. 

The thick plastic doors parted with a barely audible hiss of air pressure change as they moved from the store into a cavernous space that Erik assumed was the store room.  When the door closed behind Pinner and everyone was safely inside, he decided to risk a glance with his flashlight.  There was absolutely no light at all.  It was like they were standing in a black hole.

“Close one eye, sir,” warned Pinner as Erik unlatched his light from his vest.

“What?”

“If you keep one eye closed, when you turn on the flashlight, you won’t be blind.  You’ll still have dark-adaptation in one eye.  It’s an old soldier’s trick.”

“Right on,” said Erik and he did as he was told.  He turned on the light for three seconds—long enough for him to see they were indeed in the store’s receiving area.  Boxes were stacked nearly to the twenty-foot high ceiling along the outer walls.  There looked to be a supply locker—it had been busted open by someone a while ago.  There were rolls of packing tape and labels and miscellaneous warehouse supplies scattered across the floor in front of the metal cabinet.  In the far right corner, he had spotted a desk with a computer and phone and chair.  In the left far corner was what they were looking for—an emergency exit next to the large roll-up door where a truck could unload freight.

Before the light had clicked off, he had noticed there was nothing in the path from where they stood to the emergency door.  He opened his closed eye and closed the eye that was now useless because of the flashlight.   Erik grinned. 

“Hey, it worked, Pinner.  Nice.”

“Any time, sir.”

“All right, everyone, follow me—stay close and hold hands.  We’re going across the room to that door and I hope to hell there’s no alarm.”

A muffled, yet unmistakable sound caused everyone to freeze in place.  Gunfire.

“Ted!” moaned Susan.  Her voice sounded thick, almost slurred.

“Babe, we got to get her out of here.  I need to see to be able to try and fix her up…” warned Brin in a quiet voice.

“Here we go,” said Erik.  He led them across the unnerving dark space and paused as he approached the thin crack of light at the bottom edge of the emergency door.  It looked no thicker than a sheet of paper.  “Everyone get ready—when I open this, we need to slip outside quickly and quietly.”  He put his hands on the emergency exit bar.

“I’ll go first, sir.  Scout it out,” said Pinner, suddenly at his shoulder. 

Erik twitched in surprise.  “Jesus, Pinner, don’t sneak up on me like—”   Erik froze.  When he had jumped, his hand brushed a panel sticking up off the doors push-bar.  He gingerly moved his hands over a hexagonal panel.  It was clear as a bell in his mind’s eye: a stop sign.

“Hold up—I think this things got an alarm.  There’s a piece sticking up that’s in the shape of a stop sign.”  His hands explored the door some more as another burst of gunfire reached them through the empty store.  It sounded further away.  An answering shot, loud and sharp, seemed to come from the other side of the cinder-block wall of the receiving area.

“Major’s leading ‘em on a wild goose chase,” said Pinner, the smile evident in his voice.

“Shit, there’s a big square thing on the door, too…I think it’s a battery compartment.”  Erik shook his head.  “We can’t risk this thing squealing when we push it.  The Russian’s will come running for sure.”

“What about this big door?” asked Brin.  “I can feel with my hands it’s like corrugated steel or something.  It’s big.”

“I think that’s where the delivery trucks unload…” whispered Erik.  More gunfire in the distance.  “Screw it, let’s go.  Pinner, feel the wall here, where it meets the door.  Got it?”

“Hooah.”

“Good, shimmy down to the other side.”  Erik waited for his NCO to reach the far side of the roll-up door.  “Ready?”

“Yup.”

“Feel any locks?  I got nothing on this side.”

“Yeah,” said Pinner.  “Someone already cut it…got it in my hand.”

“All right,” said Erik.  “Try to lift…just an inch.  I want to see if this thing is loud or not.”

“Roger.”

“On three.  One…two…three!”

The door groaned as the two men put their backs into lifting what Erik figured must have been a motorized door.  Something popped and the resistance slackened.  The door moved, metal on metal screeching for just a second.  A slice of white sunlight pierce the darkness at their feet and grew to an inch or so in thickness.

“Hold it,” hissed Erik.  “Brin, can you drop down and see if you see anyone out there?  Hurry,” he said.  “This thing is heavy.”

Brin quickly got to the floor and Erik could see her pretty face appear in the light as she blinked back tears.  “God, it’s
bright
out there,” she whispered.  “I can’t see anything…”

Come on…come
on
, baby…I can’t hold this thing forever…

“Wait…I can see now…”  Brin turned her head left and right.  There was only space for her to see out of one eye, so she was flat on the floor.   “I see some parachutes fluttering in the trash out there in the back of the stores…and some trees on the other side of the alley.  No people though.”

A shout echoed down the alley far to their left.  More gunfire, louder now with the door cracked open.  One of the kids let out a yelp that was cut off by someone’s hand covering a tiny mouth.

“All right, Pinner, let’s get this thing up about two or three feet.  Ready?  Brin—find something we can use to keep it open so we can get out.  Pinner…slowly now, let’s keep it quiet.  Go!”

Erik strained and tried to stand up, using his legs and keeping his back straight.  The door was reluctant to move but his strength, combined with Pinner’s, forced the issue.  A little more groaning, a faint metallic protest, and the door was up to a height that they could all comfortably slip through.

“I can’t find anything,” whispered Brin.

“Got it…sir…” grunted Pinner. 

Erik heard a muffled clang and then Pinner exhaled.  “Done.  You can let go now, sir.”

Erik slowly released the door and held his breath as his side sagged a few inches and stopped.  “What’d you do?” he asked Pinner.

“Shoved my knife in a slot there in the wheel-track.  Don’t think I’ll get that knife back, but we can at least get the hell out of here.”

“Good thinking, Pinner.  Okay everyone, let’s go.  I see there’s a ramp on the other side of the loading dock.  Me and Sgt. Pinner are going to hop down and then we’ll help you down.  When we’re all outside, we’re going to sneak our way across the alley there and into those pine trees.  Okay?”

More gunfire and foreign shouts exploded outside.  They sounded even further away but it still made the children squeak and Erik’s heart skip a beat.  “I…don’t think…” Susan started.

“No time for debate.  Pinner, let’s do this.”  Erik and Pinner rolled under the door and dropped the four feet into the well of the loading dock.  The ramp behind them led up to the street level.  Erik could see they would be exposed for about thirty feet or so before they made it into the thick brush at the far side of the alley.  He could hear the noise of the late season cicadas, calling to him from the pines.  He peeked over the lip of the well in time to hear a loud bang and see a puff of smoke appear at the far end of the strip mall in the distance.  More gunfire—a lot of it—quickly followed the explosion.  Whatever the hell Ted was doing, he was sure making enough noise.

“Let’s go, quickly now… and remember,
ssshhhh
,” Erik said, holding his hands up for Ted’s eldest son to drop down out of the building.

He helped Susan last.  Erik couldn’t help but wince at the sight of her shirt, wet and dark, stained with blood from her reopened stomach wound.  In the sun once more, he easily saw how pale she looked.  Brin hopped down gracefully into his arms next and hugged him quickly.  His heart raced at the feeling of her body pressed so closely against his own. 

“I don’t know if she’s going to make it,” she whispered into his ear as she nuzzled his neck. 

He stepped back from her, his face grim.  “We’ve got to try.”

Someone shouted something from the alley.  It sounded like
knee d’vee-gots-ya
to Erik.  He spun around to see a Russian paratrooper aiming an AK-47 at them.  His blue eyes were wide and he kept moving the rifle from person to person.  The Russian took a few steps down the ramp and glanced down the length of the strip mall. 

Erik followed his gaze.  There was no one else in sight, but a loud crashing sound and some more gun fire rolled down the alley toward them.  Ted was still on the loose and Erik figured the Russian was alone.

The same thought appeared to have crossed the invader’s mind as he shifted his eyes between him and Pinner, like a dog trying to decide which bone to chew first.  The Russian said something else and motioned with the gun towards the ground. 

Erik glanced at Pinner.  “I think he wants us to get on the ground.”

Pinner never took his eyes off the Russian.  He said nothing.

The paratrooper took a split second to survey the women and children, his eyes flicking back to Pinner.  He only gave Erik a brief glance.   Pinner was drawing the majority of the attention.

For good reason,
thought Erik.
The man looks like a human pit-bull.  I’m no soldier…what the hell am I doing here?

Another gunshot echoed in the distance and the Russian turned to look.  Pinner charged.  In two steps, he collided with the Russian.  He kicked is right leg out and tried to sweep the taller foreigner off his feet while throwing the weight of his body at the rifle. 

It almost worked.

Erik stood transfixed, watching in slow motion as Pinner struggled with the Russian over control of the rifle.  In less than three seconds, the Russian’s rifle clattered to the ground a few feet away.  Erik found the ability to move again and rushed forward up the ramp to help Pinner.

That was when he noticed the blood drops on the ground at Pinner’s feet, bright red medallions of bad, bad news.  Hands clutched to his chest, Pinner staggered back from the Russian.  His copper-skinned hands were red and slick with the attempt to hold his life inside his body.  The Russian stood there with his mouth open, still crouched in the fighting stance he had adopted when Pinner bull-rushed him.  He blinked and watched as Pinner took another, shuddering, unsteady step backwards before collapsing to his knees.

Pinner turned and looked at Erik, but when he opened his mouth to speak, only a pink froth escaped his lips.  He glared back at the Russian and fell over onto his side.  The movement caused a small deluge of blood to seep onto the ground, running downhill on the ramp towards…

Someone gasped behind him and he heard Ted’s children scream.  The effect was like a slap in the face to Erik.  Pinner had knocked the Russian’s gun away, been stabbed for his efforts and was likely dying within reach, and here Erik was just standing there like some slack-jawed yokel at a drive-in movie.

He looked from Pinner—now with a feeble hand outstretched toward Erik, clawing at the air—to the grinning Russian.  All trace of nervousness had vanished from the paratrooper’s cruel face.  It was clear from his look, he was going to enjoy what was coming next.

Erik was drowning in emotion—rage bubbled up inside and propelled him forward.  He reached to his side and in order to swing up his rifle, cursing himself for a fool since he had not thought to do so earlier.  He was hoping there was time to save Pinner when he realized his hands were still empty and the Russian was still advancing down the ramp.  Erik looked over this shoulder—in the dark maw of the loading dock door, he could see the butt of his M4 partially sticking out of the shadows a good ten feet away on the other side of Brin, Susan, and the cowering children.  The rage vanished like fog in the morning sun, replaced with a cold, paralyzing fear.