Stand Your Ground (19 page)

“Mr. Rahal . . .” Alexis began tentatively.

“Shut up, bitch. In my religion, women know their place. They know to keep silent.”

“But . . . but I've always tried to help you! I've always been on your side.”

Rahal smiled thinly and said, “Then you are a fool.”

“Get him out of here.” Baldwin barked the order to the guards. “Put him back where he came from.”

A couple of the guards moved in, grabbed Rahal's arms, and jerked him to his feet.

“Don't,” Alexis said. “Don't hurt him. Don't retaliate against him on my account.”

“You really are slow to understand, aren't you?” Rahal said to her. “To me, you are nothing but an American sow, fit only for raping before your throat is cut.”

“Out!” Baldwin bellowed. “Get him out!”

The guards hustled Rahal out of the library. Alexis still sat there looking like someone had slapped her across the face, but after a moment she blinked a couple of times, swallowed, and looked at Riley Nichols.

“You cut the camera when he started talking like that, didn't you?” Alexis asked. “You didn't allow that to go out live?”

“Why, I thought you wanted the live feed, Ms. Devereaux,” Riley said in apparent innocence.

Kincaid heard the faint tone of mockery in the woman's voice. She had known very well what she was doing. Suddenly he liked Riley, even though the way she had looked at him earlier, as if she were trying to recall where she had seen him before, was worrisome. She was not only good-looking, she was smart as well.

Plenty smart enough not to agree with all of Alexis Devereaux's liberal claptrap.

“No!” Alexis practically wailed. “The country shouldn't have seen that. The man is obviously deranged. He's not a true representative of Islam—”

“He represents the part that wants to kill us and destroy our country,” Stark spoke up. “And that's a whole lot bigger percentage than people like you want to admit.”

“No! You heard what he said. Islam is a religion of peace.”

“He also said he and his friends were going to put us all to the sword,” Stark pointed out. “Hard to reconcile that with claims of being peaceful. Which was the lie you wanted to hear, Ms. Devereaux . . . and which was the truth?”

“I've had enough of this,” Alexis snapped. Clearly, she had gotten over her shock. She stood up and went on, “I'm leaving.”

Baldwin said, “No offense, ma'am, but I don't think any of us will be sorry to see you go.”

Alexis scowled at him, then told the news crew, “Come on,” and stalked out of the library with the others trailing her.

Riley Nichols gave Kincaid another of those unreadable glances over her shoulder as she left.

Baldwin looked at Kincaid and Stark, shook his head ruefully, and said, “Your visit has been more eventful than I intended, John Howard.”

“That's all right, George,” Stark said. “As you pointed out, things seem to happen that way.”

Baldwin just grunted and followed the others out of the library, leaving Kincaid and Stark there alone.

Kincaid leaned on the counter and frowned in thought. He said, “You know, there's something about that performance that bothers me.”

“Rahal's, you mean . . . or Ms. Devereaux's?”

“Both, actually, but I was talking about Rahal's. Ms. Devereaux's attitude just kind of makes me sick at my stomach. I'm thinking about the way Rahal suddenly changed his tune. Before he was mouthing the sort of feel-good platitudes that the Left always likes to hear from Muslims . . .”

“And then he was foaming at the mouth and revealing the way he really feels about us.”

“Exactly,” Kincaid said with a nod. “Did he just get tired of putting on an act? He wasn't able to keep the truth inside anymore?”

“Or was he thinking that everything is about to change and there wasn't any reason to lie?” Stark asked.

From the look on the big Texan's face, Kincaid could tell that Stark was starting to see things the way he did.

What was about to happen that had prompted Rahal's sudden change of attitude?

And how did he know?

Kincaid didn't have any answers to those questions, but the sudden, strident blare of a siren made both him and Stark straighten and go tense as their muscles instinctively readied for action.

“Is that—” Stark began.

“The alarm,” Kincaid confirmed. “I don't know what's going on, but it's bound to be trouble. Bad trouble.”

Stark was glad Lucas Kincaid was with him as they left the prison library. Not only did Kincaid know his way around the place, but also he would be a good man to have at your side if all hell broke loose.

Or rather,
when
all hell broke loose, because Stark knew that generally such occurrences were inevitable.

Going all the way back to his service in Vietnam, Stark had been a good judge of character. He'd had to be in order to survive that jungle hellhole. Put your trust in the wrong man and you were as good as dead.

That had held true in all the fracases in which Stark had found himself in recent years, too.

He trusted Kincaid and was confident that the man would have his back, and vice versa.

As they hurried along a cement-walled corridor, Stark asked, “Is that siren what goes off when there's a breakout, like in the old prison movies?”

“Yeah, but that's not necessarily what it means. It's just an alarm. Could be for bad weather or something like that.”

“The sky was just about clear when I drove out here today, and there weren't any storms in the forecast.” Stark paused. “But out here, a thunderstorm can blow up without much warning and spin off a tornado. Not many windows in here to let a fella keep an eye on the sky.”

He didn't believe for a second, though, that the alarm was weather-related, and judging from the way Kincaid said, “Uh-huh,” neither did he.

Kincaid led them to what appeared to be a command center for the correctional officers who worked here at Hell's Gate, and from there they followed the sound of angry voices to the prison's main entrance hall.

Alexis Devereaux had her hands balled into fists and planted against her hips as she confronted George Baldwin. It was an oddly inelegant pose for her, but she appeared to be so furious that she didn't care.

“You can't keep us locked up in here,” she told Baldwin. “We're not some of your damned inmates.”

“I told you, I can't allow you to leave until I know what the situation is out there,” Baldwin responded. “As long as you're on the grounds of this facility, your safety and the safety of your companions is my responsibility.”

“At least tell me what's going on,” Alexis demanded.

“I wish I knew,” Baldwin muttered. He noticed Stark and Kincaid and waved them over. “John Howard, I'm sorry to have to say this, but you can't leave right now.”

“That's all right, George,” Stark assured his old friend. “If there's something I can do to help . . .”

Baldwin drew Stark and Kincaid over to one side, ignoring the glare that Alexis directed at him as he did so. Lowering his voice so that only the two of them could hear him, he said, “It looks like the prison is under attack.”

“By who?” Kincaid asked.

“A damned army, from what Cambridge told me. I sent him and Bert Frazier to check out the trouble in Fuego, but they didn't make it that far. They ran into a bunch of trucks and pickups headed this way. There's an armed force about to—”

From outside came the roar of an explosion, loud enough to make most of the people in the room jump. A panic-stricken Travis Jessup ran toward the glass entrance doors, but a couple of guards blocked his way. He looked out past them and yelled, “They're shooting out there! The prison is being invaded!”

Kincaid looked at Stark and said, “Rahal knew this was coming. That's why he acted like he did.”

The tall, bearded sound technician said, “Yes, he did.” He reached under the bush jacket he wore to pull out a pistol, which he pointed at George Baldwin and fired.

 

 

Phillip Hamil had hoped to get closer to the prison before his force's approach was discovered, but fate had intervened. Since Hamil was not one to question the workings of fate, he assumed Allah had a good reason for allowing the encounter with the prison van.

It didn't really matter anyway, he told himself. The infidels would have known soon enough that their day of judgment had arrived.

The men in the pickups and cars, the quicker, more maneuverable vehicles, struck first, charging the fence and the guard installations and peppering them with machine-gun and small-arms fire.

That served its purpose, which was to draw out as many of the guards as possible. As they gathered at forward positions to fight off the attack, Hamil ordered the big guns brought up. They were D-30 122 mm Howitzers, Soviet armament captured in Afghanistan forty years earlier, and despite their age they had been well-maintained, and functioned flawlessly.

Disassembled and shipped to Mexico by circuitous routes, the guns had been smuggled into the United States over a period of months by the cartel allies of Hamil's cause. They had been put together again in remote, camouflaged locations hidden away as much as possible from satellite surveillance.

It helped that the organization had tendrils in the NSA and the Department of Defense, the same as it did in every other area of the federal government. Not sleeper agents, not exactly, because they were active operatives working against American interests under the cover of being part of the government. Not many dared question the fact that so many Muslims were now part of the military and most governmental agencies. To do so would be politically incorrect, not to mention career suicide in a Democratic administration, which was all Washington had anymore.

If any hint of what the organization had planned was about to come to light, there were agents in place to snuff it out right away. Hamil always smiled when he thought about how the Americans were already teetering on the brink of annihilation—and most of them had no idea of their peril.

Who had time to think about such things when there was so much celebrity gossip to keep up with?

Because of the Americans' unwitting complicity in their own destruction, Hamil now had these big guns mounted on the backs of heavy trucks, and as they rumbled up and took their places and their crews began the process of loading the guns and zeroing in on the prison, he was filled with a vast sense of satisfaction.

One of the men called to him, “We're ready, Doctor!”

Hamil nodded solemnly and said, “Then in the name of Allah . . . fire!”

 

 

The plastic gun—because that was what Kincaid was sure it was, probably taken apart before Joel Fanning came into the prison and then put back together while the sound tech was in the bathroom or something—popped as it went off. The report wasn't loud, wasn't threatening, but the rubber projectile the weapon fired would have killed Baldwin if it had hit him in the right place.

Luckily for the warden, Kincaid had reacted with instinctive, blinding speed and rammed his body into Baldwin's, knocking him aside.

The rubber bullet still struck Baldwin, but it thudded into his shoulder rather than ripping into his throat and maybe severing the jugular. Baldwin grunted in pain, stumbled, went to a knee.

Fanning tried to bring the gun to bear on Kincaid, but he was too slow. Kincaid swept his left arm up, caught it under Fanning's right forearm, and thrust it toward the ceiling.

At the same instant, Riley Nichols snap-kicked the side of Fanning's left knee, breaking it. Fanning started to yelp in pain, but the sound barely got started before the side of Kincaid's right hand slashed across his throat, crushing the larynx and causing him to gasp futilely for air as he collapsed to the floor.

Fanning's struggles lasted only a few seconds before a grotesque rattle came from his ruined throat. His body went lax.

“You—you killed him!” Alexis Devereaux cried in shock and horror.

“That's what he had in mind for us,” Kincaid replied curtly. “He was working with that bunch out there.”

He turned to Baldwin but saw that Stark was already helping his old friend. Stark helped Baldwin to a chair and pressed a handkerchief to the blood welling from the warden's shoulder wound.

More explosions hammered the prison. Kincaid felt the floor tremble under his feet. He scooped up the plastic gun Fanning had dropped and ran over to the entrance. The sliding doors there were thick, bulletproof glass, and through them Kincaid saw a holocaust of smoke and fire as shells screamed in and pounded the compound's outer perimeter.

The fence was already a tangled mess of wire. The concrete barriers designed to stop car and truck bombs were no match for artillery. They had been reduced to rubble.

A lot of good men were dead out there, Kincaid knew, but then he shoved that thought out of his mind.

If any of them were going to survive this attack, they had to act now.

He swung around to look at Stark and Baldwin and said, “We need to fall back to a more secure position.”

Baldwin's rugged face was pale and drawn. The handkerchief Stark was holding to the wound was already soaked with blood. But Baldwin nodded and said, “Yeah, this part of the prison wasn't designed to stand up to an onslaught like that.” He paused, then added bleakly, “I'm not sure any of it was. That's a damned artillery barrage!”

“What is going on here?” Alexis Devereaux screamed. Travis Jessup stood to one side, microphone dangling forgotten in one hand as he blubbered in fear.

Riley was the only one of the visitors other than Stark who seemed to be keeping her head. She had the camera running, in fact, documenting the desperation in the prison's reception area.

“I can tell you what's going on here, Alexis,” she said coolly. “Abu Rahal's buddies have come to get him out of jail.”

“You don't know that,” Alexis responded in a shrill, strident tone. “You can't make such an accusation. That's racial profiling—”

“Why don't you just shut the hell up, you stupid bitch? You couldn't see the truth if it came up and bit you on the ass—which it's probably just about to do!”

Kincaid grinned. His admiration for Riley Nichols had just gone up yet another notch.

“The lady's right,” Stark said. “This is a terrorist attack, plain and simple. I don't know how they got a blasted army together in the middle of West Texas, but those are fanatical Islamic terrorists out there, and their goal is to kill all of us and free their friends. That's the only explanation that makes any sense.”

Alexis had been opening and closing her mouth like a fish. She struggled to regain control of herself with a visible effort and then said, “It can't be. It must be right-wing nutjobs! A militia! The—the Tea Party!”

“Now she's hysterical,” Kincaid said dryly. “But we won't leave her for them to find. Let's go.”

Baldwin looked at Kincaid with narrowed eyes and said, “You know what you're doing, son. You're in charge.” He lifted his weak voice so the handful of other guards in the room could hear. “Kincaid is in charge, understand?”

Kincaid hesitated. He didn't want to be in command. He hadn't come to Hell's Gate to do anything except lie low and hope that someday the forces that were after him would forget about him.

That wasn't likely to happen, but after today it might not matter.

The explosions were creeping closer to the front of the prison as the enemy's guns got the range.

“Mr. Stark, help the warden,” Kincaid said. He looked around, spotted a guard he recognized, a young man who appeared disheveled and shaken. “Cambridge! Are you all right?”

Cambridge nodded and stood up a little straighter.

“Yes, sir,” he said.

“You've traded lead with those bastards. How many of them are there?”

Cambridge shook his head slowly and said, “I don't know. A lot. They've got machine guns and no telling what else.”

“All right, we'll talk about it later. For now, you take Ms. Nichols, Ms. Devereaux, and Mr. Jessup and head for the maximum security wing. Mr. Stark, you and the warden go with them.”

Alexis protested, “I don't have to do what you tell me.”

Riley lowered the camera, took hold of Alexis's arm, and steered her toward the door leading back deeper into the prison.

“Right now you do, if you want to stay alive,” Riley said.

Cambridge urged the still-sobbing Travis Jessup after them.

Stark had Baldwin on his feet again. Baldwin asked, “Why the max security wing, Lucas?”

“Because if we're going to make a stand, that's where we have the best chance of doing it,” Kincaid said.

“That's where the prisoners they're after are being held.”

“I know, but it's also the best place for us to defend.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Round up as many guards as possible, break open the armory, and get ready for a gunfight. A
big
gunfight. And then we'll move as many of the prisoners as we can, too.”

“Thank God you said that, son. The inmates are my responsibility. We can't just leave them behind to be slaughtered. And you know that bunch is going to kill every American they find in here, inmates, guards, whoever.”

Kincaid nodded and said, “I know.”

He had dealt with that kind before. They wouldn't leave any infidels alive behind them. They believed in a scorched-earth policy.

Another explosion rocked the prison as everyone fled. In a matter of moments, Kincaid thought, the softening-up would be over, and then a howling horde of fanatics would come pouring into the prison bent on red-handed slaughter. They used modern technology, but at heart they were the same medieval barbarians they had been a thousand, fifteen hundred years earlier. Their basic nature, the urge to kill those who didn't believe as they did in as bloody a manner as possible, never changed.

The Americans in Hell's Gate wouldn't go down without a fight, though.