Sic Semper Tyrannis (34 page)

The question was, whose were they?  Stapleton grabbed his field glasses again and focused.  They were definitely warships, he could tell by the silhouettes.  Those were no commercial vessels.  They were long, lean, and looked menacing.  The distance was still too great for him to be able to tell what flag they flew.  He hadn’t heard anything about any Navy assets arriving on scene, but then again, he hadn’t really had very meaningful conversations with the man claiming to be president, either.

Stapleton chewed his cigar.  “Anybody see any flags?”

A half dozen or so soldiers that were standing on top of the embankment responded in the negative.  “They’re still too far out, sir.”

“Winston!”

Behind him on the ground behind the embankment, the major’s response wafted up.  “Yes, sir?”

“Scrounge up some radio gear, I don’t care how you find it—we got us a fleet of about ten… no,
twelve
ships out there on the horizon.  South-southeast.  See if you can raise them.”  He chewed his unlit cigar in silence for another few moments.  “And while you’re at it, see if you can find any other friendlies in the area available to assist us.  Air Force, Navy, Marines… Hell, I’ll even take a Coast Guard cutter at this point!”

“Understood, sir.”  Winston replied.

Stapleton focused his attention on the largest of the vessels on the horizon.  It had to be one big son of a bitch.  For the first time in his professional life, General Thaddeus Stapleton prayed to God the Navy was on the way.

CHAPTER 24

Abandon All Hope

AT LAST, THE DAY had arrived.  Erik and the other prisoners were going to make their break for freedom.  He had been on watch a few hours earlier and had only rested lightly since.  He heard the rattle of the lock and chain on the outside of the door and quickly whispered an alert that went around the darkened room.  The men got up and into their places.

Erik felt his heart rate pick up.  He pretended to be asleep on his side, his back to the door.  This time, Erik made sure he was a good 10 paces inside the room.  With the usual crash of a heavy boot on the wood door, dim light entered the room. 

As usual, two Russians entered.  Erik rolled over onto his other side to watch them enter and take a peek straight out the door behind them.  One had a gun trained on Erik, the other looked warily around the room.  They were alone.  Erik shifted his gaze to the prisoner hiding in the shadows to the left of the door.  He nodded at Erik.  Erik waited until the Russians were almost on top of him before he gave the agreed-upon signal.

"Morning fellas!"

The Russians paused.  Erik had never greeted them before.  The Americans hidden in the shadows on either side of the door quickly stepped behind the guards as two more men on either side attacked them.  The men behind the Russians clamped their arms over their faces so they couldn't scream for help.  In seconds, the two Russians were on the floor, tackled by three or four Americans each.  Purnell stepped up and grabbed the discarded rifle.  He moved to the door and stuck his head out before ducking back inside.

"Coast is clear," he whispered.  "There's nobody out there.”

“All right guys," said Erik when he got to his feet.  "It's go time."

The unconscious Russians were dragged off to the far corners of the cabin where they were bound together and gagged with strips of rotted cloth.  Erik’s men quickly relieved their prisoners of any useful tools, weapons, or food they had in their possession. 

When everybody was as well armed and ready as possible, they gathered at the door.  Purnell split the 23-man unit into squads.

Erik took a knife from one of the Russians and led a five-man unit tasked with freeing the women and children.  Purnell took the main body of Americans to the administration building where they planned to confront Captain Stepanovich personally.  The rest of the men had been tasked with releasing captives from the other buildings. 

Erik waited at the door while Purnell led his squad out and the remaining prisoners spread out among the other cabins.  He turned to the five men waiting behind him waiting in the darkness.  "Let's go."

Erik wove a path way through the pines.  The Bible camp was so deep in the woods that the other escapees were already lost among the trees.  A gentle breeze wafted between the trees.  It felt good to feel cool air on his face.  Above him, the tall pines whispered to each other under the dome of smoke from Orlando.

Erik paused behind a particularly thick pine.  He peered around the trunk and saw a pair of cabins in the distance.  All they had to do was get past those, sneak around to the south through another copse of trees and they would arrive at the rear of their target building.  "Okay guys, almost there.  It’s on the other side of those buildings," he said, pointing through the trees.

"Easy as eatin’ pancakes," said one of the men.

"Quiet!" another hissed, "Guards, 2 o'clock.”

Erik waited until the guards were facing away and deep in a conversation before he gave the order to attack.  He and his men sprinted across the cleared ground and pounced on the guards.  The first fell under the assault of two men into a pile of flailing arms and legs.  The second guard had just enough time to turn and elicit a surprised gasp before Erik tackled him head-on.

In the ensuing struggle, Erik forgot that he still held the knife.  When he disentangled himself, he noticed that the blade had sunk deep under the Russian’s ribcage.  The man—not much more than a teenager, really—gasped for breath like a fish out of water, his eyes wide and darting left and right.  He tried to speak through the pink-frothed spit which bubbled up from his lungs. 

Erik sat back on his heels.  His hands trembled and dripped crimson blood on the dirt.   He stared at the handle of his knife as it stuck up out of the Russian’s chest.  Muffled screams behind him announced the death of the other guard.  Erik looked from his hands to the soldier and back one more time.  He had stabbed…a boy.

“You okay, sir?” asked one of the men as he helped himself to the Russian’s gear. 

Erik just stared at him.  He couldn’t answer, not with all that warm, sticky blood on his hands.  How could he be okay?  He was responsible for a long, lingering, painful death…of a child, really… Thoughts and worries raced through his head as if a dam had broken.  The kid hadn’t even been looking when Erik had attacked him like…

Like that escaped prisoner that attacked Brin and Susan back at the Freehold.

Erik shuddered and closed his eyes. 
What’s happening to me?  What have I become?
  Erik saw a replay of the   convict’s face as he’d driven his
katana
through the man’s neck.  How surprised he had looked…

“Sir?” asked a voice, tight with tension.  “Sir, are you okay?”

Erik opened his eyes and the world rushed to meet his reeling consciousness.  He glanced at the ring of dirty, desperate looking men.  Americans.  Escaped prisoners.  He looked down at the struggling form of the dying Russian at his feet. 

The young Russian thrust a blood-stained hand at Erik, seeking help or mercy.  He tried to speak again and coughed on his own blood.  The fear in his eyes was real.  It made Erik’s chest tighten with sympathy. 

He had his whole life ahead of him…maybe a girl back in Russia.  Now he knows he’s about to die, to go see whatever God he believes in…or just to…end.
  The thought was almost more than Erik’s tortured mind could bear.

Rough hands shook his shoulder.  “Sir, snap out of it.”  Corporal Delano’s voice cut through the doubt and fear in Erik’s mind like a knife.  “I feel sorry for him, too.  He’s just a kid.  But dammit, he’s the one who invaded
our
country.  He’s the one who killed
our
friends.” 

Erik stared into the man’s eyes.  Delano was completely void of compassion or hesitation.  The corporal waited for Erik to finish the Russian.  He took Erik’s knife from the Russian’s chest with a sickening squelch and offered it to Erik by the blood-slick blade.  He raised an eyebrow.

Anger suddenly flared in Erik.  Delano was right.  This kid—maybe he had been drafted—picked the wrong country to invade.  He put on the uniform, he shot his rifle and he took his chances.  The house always wins.  Erik frowned and thought of what the Russians had done to Brin.  All doubt vanished from his mind.  He was suddenly ashamed.   Erik snatched the knife and drove it deep into the Russian’s throat.   He felt the blade bite deep as it sliced the spinal cord.  The boy’s eyes flew open and his body stiffened before the light faded from his eyes and it was over.

Erik ripped the knife free from the boy’s neck and stood, anger clouding his face.  He was about to move toward their target when he noticed Delano stripping the Russian’s uniform.  “What are you doing?” he whispered.

“For the fence.  You said they had barbed-wire around the women and children, right?” Delano asked.  He tugged at the torn, bloody shirt.  “When we get there, we throw this over the wire and use it to make a hole.”

By the time they arrived at the building housing the non-combatants, Erik’s group had swelled to nearly fifteen men.  They had been joined by others, freed from nearby cabins.  So far, not a shot had been fired. 

As far as he knew, the Russians were completely ignorant of the prison break.  That was confirmed when Erik crawled to the edge of the treeline and saw four guards milling about smoking cigarettes in the yard behind the women’s building.  They laughed about something, unaware that death waited in the forest just twenty feet away on the other side of the fence.

Delano moved his team into the shadows along the treeline to Erik’s left.  Erik found a man to relay the plan to the rest of his squad, spread out to his right.  He settled in to wait for the signal from Purnell.   Eventually, the guards split up and causally moved to the four corners of the yard.

Corporal Delano returned from the left flank. He whispered, “They’re nervous, sir.  Rooks, like the one you knifed.”

“Rooks,” Erik muttered.
Like the one you knifed.

“Shouldn’t be too hard to take ‘em down when Sarge lights up that admin building.”

“Wonder how he’s going to—” Erik began.  A ground-shaking explosion split the night and the roaring overpressure knocked everyone on their assess.

“Fuck!” hooted Delano.  “Sarge don’t know how to do anything if it ain’t big and loud!”  The others chuckled quietly as they witnessed a glowing fireball ascend into the gloomy pre-dawn sky.

Erik watched the four guards as they raced toward the expanding pillar of smoke and debris on the far side of the women’s building.  It was the best chance they’d get.

“Now!” he hissed.  He ran forward and draped the bloody clothes that Delano had collected over the barbed-wire and pushed down.  He found it surprisingly easy to hold the wire down far enough for a man to clear the fence without slowing his stride.  They rushed by in a blur to attack the guards who had slipped around the building.

“Here, sir, let me.  Go get your wife,” Delano said, suddenly at Erik’s side.

“Thanks—everyone follow me!”  Erik charged across the exercise yard and rushed into the open side door of the women's quarters.  He could hear the sound of a dozen men hot on his heels.

A nagging thought occurred to him that he’d heard no shouting or gunshots from the men who’d raced off to attack the Russian guards.   Had his men so completely surprised them they’d been taken down without firing a shot?  Erik pushed the worries from his mind as he descended into the pitch-black of the women's cabin.

He immediately felt something was wrong.  There was no sense of presence.  When he’d been there the day before, people and cots had been stacked like cordwood along the long walls.  There’d been screaming children, entire families.  There had to have been close to a hundred people. 

Erik slowed to a stop and peered around in the darkness. 
There should damn near be a riot going on.  Right now.
  Erik heard nothing, except the confused mutterings of his own men searching the darkness and the occasional distant gunshot from outside, muffled by the wooden walls of the cabin. 

“Sally?  Where are you?” called out one of his men.

“Mel, baby, it’s me!  We escaped!  Mel?” said another.

"What the hell?"  Erik said. 

“Where is everyone?” asked Delano. 

“Brin!” Erik shouted.

A deep rumble from outside caused everyone in the building freeze.  Erik turned toward the open door.  A string of gunfire erupted from outside.

"Trap!  It’s a God damn trap!" a man outside shouted right before he was cut down.  Erik saw the spray of bloody mist that hung in the air for a split second after the man's body crumpled to the ground.

"
NO!
" Erik cried.  He was so
close
.  He’d seen Brin here yesterday!  All he had to do was get out of this building—she had to be here somewhere.  As one, the men around him began to scatter and seek shelter.  He nearly dropped his knife when someone crashed into him in the darkness and screamed about his own children.

The far wall exploded in fire and light.  When Erik picked himself up off the floor, he could see the shining headlights of the Russian BTR through the gaping hole in the wall.  Rubble, shattered bricks, and chunks of wood had been scattered for 20 feet in all directions.  Under the watchful gaze of the BTR, Russians poured in through the wall shouting commands and waving rifles.

A flashlight snapped on and floodlights brought in from outside.  The interior of the women's cabin was illuminated for the first time and Erik saw that his entire team had been well and neatly trapped by more than 20 Russians armed with assault rifles, backed up by an armored personnel carrier.

The thought occurred to Erik that he should turn and run. 
Escape
, the voice urged him,
get out, do anything possible to get away.  You’ve got to come back and save Brin another day.
  But the Russians had thought of that, too.  Erik turned to look at the door that they had entered from and saw three more Russians throw the body of an American to the floor.

It was over.

"Brin…" Erik whispered.  The chill hand of depression began to worm its way around his heart.  For one shining moment, a flicker of hope had kindled in his soul—he would be able to pull Brin and Susan and the kids from this despicable place and escape.  They could reunite with Ted somewhere on the outside.  The chance they would actually be able to make their way north and escape the whole war… It had seemed so damn close.  And now…