Stand Your Ground (27 page)

The guards' command center in the maximum security wing contained several video monitors so that an officer could sit at the console and cycle through the live feeds from various cameras to keep an eye on the entire wing. Whoever was watching the monitors couldn't see everything at once, however.

One of the cameras was mounted at the far end of the corridor leading into the wing. Kincaid suggested that they keep its feed up on one of the monitors all the time, since that's where an attack would come from. Stark and Cambridge agreed. The three of them had formed a triumvirate of sorts to take charge of the wing's defense.

The terrorists had pulled back around a corner, out of sight of the camera. Kincaid had no doubt that they would be back, though, as he sat slumped in a chair at the console.

The killers had come too far, spilled too much blood, to turn back without achieving their goal.

Behind him, the door into the command center was open. He heard a lot of yelling going on but didn't pay much attention to it. Some of the terrorists locked up here had started shouting insults at the regular minimum security inmates who were crowded into the wing's open areas. The American prisoners had responded angrily, of course, and the pointless argument was still going on.

Kincaid heard a quiet footstep behind him and looked over his shoulder to see that Stark had entered the room.

“Everything under control out there, John Howard?” Kincaid asked.

“Yeah, as much as it's likely to be,” Stark said as he took one of the other chairs. “Thought we should have a talk, Lucas.”

“What about? The weather? Football? Please tell me you don't want to talk politics.”

Stark grunted and said, “I've got a bad taste in my mouth already. Talking about politics would just make it worse. I was thinking more along the lines of you telling me what it is you're hiding out from.”

Kincaid tried to control his reaction, but he couldn't keep from shooting a surprised glance at the older man.

“What do you mean, hiding out?” Kincaid asked, pitching his tone as if that were the craziest idea he had ever heard.

“You've been up to your neck in trouble before. I can tell that just by being around you. I know how to recognize a good fighting man when I see one.”

Probably from looking in the mirror, Kincaid thought, but he didn't say anything.

“Not only that,” Stark went on, “but Riley knows your face from somewhere. She was talking to me a little while ago, and I could tell she was trying to find out how much I know about you. I acted like I didn't know what she was talking about, but I sort of do. You're hiding something, Lucas, and if we're going to be fighting side by side . . . probably dying side by side . . . I think I've got a right to know.”

Kincaid could have disagreed with that and argued, but he realized suddenly that he wanted to tell somebody about it. He didn't know if that would ease the burden of carrying around the truth, but it might.

Keeping his eyes on the monitor that showed the corridor, Kincaid sighed and said, “All right, John Howard. I'll tell you the truth if you're sure you want to hear it. It isn't a very pretty story.”

“I didn't expect it to be.”

“First of all, my name isn't really Lucas Kincaid.”

“That doesn't surprise me, either.”

“But it's the only name you're going to get from me,” Kincaid said. “It's not important to what happened, anyway.”

“Fair enough,” Stark said. “Is the law after you?”

“The law?” Kincaid repeated. A bleak laugh came from him. “You could say that. But it's more like the outlaws are after me.” He straightened in his chair. “I might as well start at the beginning. I used to be in the Army. I was a Ranger, served in Iraq and Afghanistan. I was a pretty good shot, so they made me a sniper. That brought me to the attention of the Company and the other black-ops contractors over there.”

“You worked for the CIA?”

“I worked
with
the CIA,” Kincaid said. “I guess you could say I was part of a task force that went after highly specialized targets.”

“Terrorist leaders.”

Kincaid shrugged. He said, “All I knew was that they were bad guys and needed to be taken out. One of them was holed up in a compound in a Pakistani village called Warraz al-Sidar. We couldn't go after him in any conventional way because of... political considerations.”

Stark grimaced. Kincaid knew exactly how he felt.

“Dealt with the same thing in Vietnam,” Stark said. “Go on.”

“A group of us went in to take the compound and eliminate the target. I didn't know until later that the guy who put together the mission was considered to have gone rogue. He'd been specifically ordered to leave this particular target alone. I don't think even the brass knew why, but they issued the hands-off order anyway.”

“So you were disobeying orders without knowing it.”

“Yeah. I guess I should've asked more questions. But I didn't, and we went in, fourteen guys, and the mission was FUBAR right from the start. It was pretty obvious why, too. They knew we were coming.”

Stark frowned darkly. He said, “Somebody tipped them off. You were betrayed.”

“Set up, even,” Kincaid said. “And I found out why—but I'm getting ahead of myself. We found ourselves in deep, really deep, and it didn't take much figuring to know we weren't gonna get an extraction. We were supposed to be wiped out.”

“But instead you fought your way clear.”

Kincaid shook his head and said, “No, we took the compound and eliminated the target.”

Stark gave a low whistle of admiration.

“They didn't plan on you doing that, I'll bet.”

“No, they sure didn't. Only four of us made it. And more unfriendlies were on the way. So we cleared out. We had to get back across the border into Afghanistan alive. We knew that was our only chance. But before we left the compound I picked up some little USB drives that were in their command center. Nobody got around to wiping them, I guess because they didn't consider us a real threat.”

“Something was on those drives,” Stark guessed. “Something embarrassing.”

“On one of them. The rest was just organizational stuff. But on one of them was an email archive . . .”

Kincaid took a deep breath again.

“It showed that this guy we'd gone in after, this terrorist mastermind, had been in close contact with a number of operatives in the United States. Operatives holding positions in our own government.”

Stark stared at Kincaid for a moment, then said, “You're telling me that officials of our own government have been working directly with one of the leaders of the Islamic terrorist movement?”

“That's exactly what I'm telling you,” Kincaid said in a flat voice. “Did you ever stop to wonder why there are dozens of Muslims holding high positions in the State Department, the Justice Department, the departments of Defense and Homeland Security?”

“Well, you can't refuse to hire somebody because of their religion,” Stark said dryly. “That would be discrimination.”

“Technically, sure. And I'm certain there are plenty of Muslims working for the government who are perfectly loyal Americans, whose only sin is being pissy little liberal bureaucrat toadies like the white people and the black people and the brown people they work with. But high up, a lot of them take their real orders directly from al-Qaeda or the Taliban or some other terrorist group. And I mean
really
high up, in some cases. As high as you can go.”

“You're talking about . . .”

Kincaid cocked his head to the side and said, “It's no coincidence that everything the guy did while he was in office just made things worse here and weakened the country.”

“Son of a—”

“Speaking of that,” Kincaid said with a faint smile, “the emails confirmed that he really
wasn't
born here. The so-called nutjobs were right about that all along.” Kincaid blew out his breath. “But he's long since gone from office, thank goodness. Unfortunately, the ones who followed him have been almost as bad.”

“Did they know they were working with the terrorists? The fella who has the job now . . . ?”

Kincaid shook his head.

“Honest dupes, as far as I know. But it doesn't really matter. The pattern had already been established. The fanatical left wing of the Democratic party has strengthened their hold to the extent that all the Islamic undercover operatives have to do now is nudge things in the right direction from time to time. And the media is in the tank for the Democrats to such an extent that they could probably talk a majority into believing that none of it is important, even if the truth came out.”

“But the Islamic cabal in Washington doesn't want it to come out anyway,” Stark said.

“No, they do not,” Kincaid agreed. “They don't want to take a chance. I realized that when I and the three guys who got out with me made it back to where we should have been safe, but people kept trying to kill us anyway.”

“The bad guys had figured out what you uncovered in Warraz al-Sidar and sent assassins after you.”

“Yep.” Kincaid's tone hardened. “Death squads killed my friends, even though I hadn't told them anything about what was on the USB drive. They weren't any threat to the cabal. I'm the only one.” He paused. “I used intelligence contacts I'd made, got to Germany through back-channel routes, and finally reached the States. I was considered a deserter by then, so the Army is looking for me, too. If they get me, I'll be given a DD and buried in some black-site federal facility where I can be eliminated at leisure. That's why I've been lying low.”

“By working in a prison library.”

Kincaid laughed humorlessly. “Would you have thought that a guy in possession of dangerous intel like that would be working in a prison library?”

“Well . . . probably not,” Stark admitted. “You're wrong about one thing, though. You're not the only threat to the cabal anymore, not since you've told me about it.”

“Yeah, and I'm sorry about that. But for all practical purposes . . .”

“We're not getting out of here alive anyway.”

“That's the way it looks to me.”

Stark sat there frowning in thought for a few seconds before he asked, “Why haven't you gone public with this?”

“Who would believe me? Hell, the media and a majority of the American public haven't been able to see the truth when it was right in front of their eyes for the past two decades! Besides, the personal destruction machine went into overdrive on me already. The Army spread the story that I and some of my buddies had gone berserk and massacred a bunch of innocent civilians in that village. That's probably why Riley recognized me. My face was plastered all over the news for a few days. I've changed my appearance some since then, but she's got a good eye, obviously.”

“Have you told her any of this?” Stark asked quietly.

“How can I? That would just put her in danger, too. But then . . .”

“Yeah, there's that whole not-getting-out-of-here-alive thing,” Stark said. “I can tell that something's sprung up between the two of you.”

“Even though we've only known each other for a few hours?”

“Sometimes that's all it takes,” Stark said. “If I'm right, you might want to consider telling her the truth. Get it out in the open so there's no secrets between you.”

“Yeah, maybe—” Kincaid suddenly stiffened. “Or maybe it's too late to worry about it,” he went on as he looked at the movement on the monitor. “Here they come again . . . and they're really packing heat this time!”

Lee and Gibby were in the kid's pickup. Spence, Flannery, Raymond, and the other man from the Ranger SRT rode in one of the jeeps “liberated” from the terrorists, with Spence at the wheel.

That was a good choice of driver, Lee thought as the two vehicles split off from the others. Spence had been in trouble with the law more than once for racing on the highway.

Every now and then, being an arrogant hothead came in handy.

“How're you holdin' up, Gibby?” Lee asked his companion.

“I'm all right,” Gibby answered with a look of solemn determination on his face. “I know if Chuck was here he'd be tellin' me to keep it together. He taught me an awful lot, Officer Blaisdell.”

“I know he did,” Lee said. “He was a good guy and a good cop. I always enjoyed working with him.”

“We're gonna pay those bastards back for what they did. They may not have pulled the trigger, but it's their fault Chuck's dead.”

“It sure is.”

After a minute or so of silence, Gibby went on, “But things are never gonna be the same. They came into our town. Into our
town
, where we live, and ruined it. What kinda world is it where things like that happen?”

“I don't know, Gibby,” was all Lee could say. “I just don't know.”

“This country's been lucky, really lucky. And now the people runnin' things . . . it seems like they're trying to just piss it all away.”

“Yeah, it does,” Lee agreed. “But you got to remember, the people up in Washington, the people in the media . . . they're not the whole country. There are still folks like you and me . . . like Chuck . . . out here willin' to fight for what's right. As long as that's true, I think we've got a chance. I hope so, anyway.”

Gibby nodded slowly and said, “Yeah, me, too.”

Lee stiffened and leaned forward on the seat as he spotted a cloud of dust rising, off to their right. It angled toward them on an interception course.

“We got company,” he told Gibby as he pointed through the side window. “I figured when those two jeeps didn't come back, somebody might come looking for them.”

“What do we do now?”

“Keep going,” Lee said grimly. “We can't let anybody stop us from getting to town.”

A gray van came into sight, cutting across country like Gibby's pickup and the jeep were doing. Lee figured it was full of terrorists, but he and the others couldn't open fire on it yet. There was a possibility the van was being driven by a civilian trying to get away from the hellhole Fuego had turned into.

The van veered to the right and slowed so that Gibby's pickup started to draw even with it. About twenty yards separated the two vehicles. Lee looked over, saw the face of the man driving, and recognized it as Middle Eastern.

Even then Lee hesitated. Like any law enforcement officer, he knew that while racial profiling wasn't politically correct, it was also a viable tool for spotting trouble. But it wasn't a hundred percent accurate. He didn't want to start shooting at somebody who wasn't really the enemy.

Any doubts about that vanished a moment later when the driver of the van floored the gas and sent the vehicle lunging ahead. As he swung the van back to the left, bringing it in front of Gibby's pickup, the rear doors flew open and gun barrels jutted out.

“Right, Gibby!” Lee yelled as he caught a glimpse in the side mirror of the jeep turning sharply left.

Gibby jerked the wheel and the pickup careened to the right as the men in the back of the van opened fire. With the jeep going the other way, that opened a gap between it and the pickup. The automatic weapons fire from the van passed between the two vehicles.

Flannery and the other Ranger in the jeep returned the fire. The terrorists in the van shot back at them. For the moment, Lee and Gibby in the pickup seemed to be forgotten.

“Gibby!” Lee said over the roaring engine. “How are you at drivin' backward?”

A grin split Gibby's big face as he must have realized what Lee was getting at. He slammed the brakes, spun the wheel, and hauled the pickup into a spinning turn that ended with it facing back the way it had come from.

Then Gibby threw the transmission into reverse and brought his foot tromping down on the gas again.

Dirt spurted as the pickup raced backward across the flat, hard-packed dirt. Lee was on the side facing the van now, and as Gibby began to catch up to it, he opened fire with the semiautomatic rifle he had brought along, concentrating his shots on the van's tires, front and rear.

After several rounds, the front tire shredded. That corner of the van dropped sharply and dug into the ground. Momentum did the rest as the van flipped and rolled across the brush-dotted landscape.

By the time the van came to a stop, it was already burning. As a couple of men tried to climb out of it, that fire exploded into a ball of flame that engulfed the vehicle. The terrorists who had tried to escape ran crazily away from it, covered with flames as they burned alive.

It was more mercy than they deserved, but the Rangers cut them down as the jeep pulled up nearby.

A column of black smoke was already rising from the wrecked and burning van. Lee called to the others, “They'll be able to see that in town. Let's go before any more of them come looking!”

The pickup and the jeep took off again, headed for Fuego.

 

 

A short time later they approached the town from the west, the direction closest to the police station. The rest of their force would come in from the east and try to draw off the terrorists.

If anybody could make the radios in the station work, it was Raymond, Lee thought. That was why he had brought the dispatcher along. Gentle, slow-thinking Raymond probably wouldn't be much good in a fight, but he was a natural genius when it came to communications equipment.

One time somebody in the café had called Raymond an idiot savant. Lee had been ready to deck the guy, but luckily Janey had been with him and had explained what the term meant before a fight broke out.

The terrorists had probably clamped down so tight on the town that any moving vehicles would draw attention. That was why Lee told Gibby to slow down as they got closer. He didn't want their tires kicking up a lot of dust. When they were still a mile from the edge of town, Lee signaled a halt.

The six men got out to stretch their legs. Spence asked, “How long do we wait?”

“As long as we have to,” Lee said. “We'll know when to make our move.”

Flannery squinted at the western sky. He seemed to be feeling better now and was steadier on his feet. “We've got, what, an hour, hour and a half of daylight left?” he asked.

“Yeah, about that,” Lee replied.

“Might have been easier to wait until after dark to go in.”

The Ranger had a point, Lee thought. In his eagerness to do something, to fight back against the invaders, that idea hadn't occurred to him.

But it was too late now. The others were on their way to launch their feint at the eastern end of town, and there was no way to communicate with them.

That was one of the most frustrating things about this whole deal. People were used to their iPhones and iPads and 5G and 6G networks and constantly being in touch with the rest of the world from the time they woke up in the morning to the moment they went to sleep at night. And even while they were sleeping, emails and texts kept going through, so that when they woke again, new communications would be waiting for them.

Now they were alone, cut off from everybody except the people they could see and hear right in front of them.

It made a fella feel small and insignificant, that was for sure.

“We'll have to do the best we can,” Lee said, trying not to sound annoyed. Flannery's comment had gotten on his nerves, because he knew that the Ranger really ought to be in charge, not him. Flannery had been shaken up, though, so Lee had sort of been drafted into the job.

Now, for better or worse, the survival of the rest of Fuego's citizens might be up to him.

Before he could say anything else, the rattle of distant gunfire came through the air, followed by a small explosion.

“That'll be our boys gettin' their attention,” Lee said. “Come on.”

They piled into the pickup and jeep and headed swiftly for town.

Lee had already told Gibby and Spence to go to the supermarket on the western edge of Fuego and park behind it, where the vehicles would be hidden. There were a few houses farther out, but they appeared to be empty and deserted, Lee thought as the two boys drove past them.

That was ominous. It meant the terrorists had rounded up everybody in Fuego. Lee wondered what had been done with them. Had they all been killed already, or were they being held prisoner somewhere?

Maybe he and the others would try to find out, but first things first: taking control of the police station and trying to get a message to the outside world.

They reached the supermarket without incident. Gibby and Spence stopped beside the loading dock at the back of the big building. As everyone got out of the vehicles, they could hear the sounds of the battle going on at the other end of town.

“Weren't the others supposed to cut and run so the ragheads would chase them?” Spence asked. “That sounds like they're still fighting down there.”

“Yeah, but we can't worry about that now,” Lee said. “Let's get to the police station.”

The station was a couple of blocks away. Lee led his men along a side street so they could come up behind it. As they trotted along the empty street, he saw the bodies of several dogs lying here and there. Fresh anger welled up inside him at the sight. He knew the dogs must have rushed out to protect their owners and their homes as the invaders made their sweep through town. Those monsters didn't hesitate to kill innocent people, so gunning down some loyal dogs would have meant less than nothing to them.

Lee hoped the Devil had a special place in Hell lined up for those bastards.

Then the rear parking lot of the police station came into sight. Lee knew the front of the building had been blasted apart in the earlier attack, but the back looked deceptively normal. It was empty at the moment. The police cars that were usually kept there were gone.

Lee's heart pounded heavily as he paused to look at the building. He couldn't seem to get his breath. He swallowed hard and said quietly to the others, “All right, spread out a little as we go across the parking lot. Raymond, you stay behind us, you hear?”

“I can fight,” Raymond said.

“I know you can, but I need you to work the radio once we get in there, okay?”

“Okay,” Raymond said. “But if you need me to fight, you just tell me.”

“I reckon you'll know, buddy,” Lee muttered.

He held the rifle at a slant across his chest and started across the parking lot, keeping his eyes on the building as he ran. The shoes and boots of the others slapped on the concrete as they joined him.

They were still fifteen yards from the back door when armed men boiled around both rear corners of the building and opened fire, catching Lee and his companions between the two forces.

This was a trap, Lee thought in wild despair, and they had waltzed right into it!