There was news in this note that he had to share immediately with Molly. When he hurried to her room he found her all packed and ready to go.
“You know how you said you wished we could have Noah along on this thing,” Hollis said, “but you knew it wasn’t possible?”
“Yes,” Molly said. “What is it?”
“I got word just now. His father’s died.”
She sat back, and he could see her thinking. There was obviously no love lost for old man Gardner, but his passing might well create just the opportunity they needed. Noah’s help would be invaluable in what they were about to do, and now there was a way that they could find him.
“Where’s Noah right now?” she asked.
“I don’t where he is right now,” Hollis said, “but at this time tomorrow night I know exactly where he’ll be.”
She nodded. “Change of plans?”
“Change of plans.” He checked his watch. “Get ready to go, now. I’ll go see if the coast is clear.”
As he headed out of her room he had to pause at the corner of the hallway to the great room and wait. The sheriff and a deputy were visible on the porch outside the front door, but they were finally bidding good night to the Merricks and were on their way out.
And then as he watched, both of the uniformed men slumped and staggered forward almost at once. The distant sounds of the shots that had hit them arrived, and as they crumpled to the ground the full-on clatter of automatic gunfire erupted from beyond the yard outside.
Hollis wheeled and ran back to Molly’s room. As he came through the door he saw the shadow of a dark figure just outside her window. He grabbed her and turned with her held close so that his body was shielding her. A close-range boom suddenly shattered the glass and a searing impact hit him in the shoulder and knocked them both out into the hallway.
As he turned his head to look behind them, pain subsiding and shock already setting in, he saw Molly’s dog rise up and leap through the blown-out window frame and onto the man who’d shot at them. An intruder alarm was blaring, there were shouts and screams coming from everywhere, and then, all at once, the lights went out.
Chapter 42
Lieutenant Kyle Brassell leaned forward in his swivel chair, set down his coffee mug, and studied the escalating developments on the wraparound screen in front of him.
In the black status banner up at the top, the video display said MERRICK.
“Lieutenant” was a misnomer, actually—that’s what he used to be, but there were no such ranks in the management structure of the Talion Corporation. He was an STS, a senior tactical supervisor. And as his soon-to-be ex-wife was so very fond of reminding him, he had been one of those for a very long damn time.
But at the moment he was his own boss, if only by default. His many superiors had traveled to other installations where plans were being finalized for some large-scale civil-disturbance deployment that was soon to roll out across the country. It wasn’t clear whether this was just another training exercise or a live operation; sometimes one could become the other without much notice. Lately not a lot of information was trickling down to his level and he didn’t want to seem pushy—or worse, insubordinate—by asking too many questions. He took it as a vote of confidence that he was left in charge of the facility and gladly accepted this opportunity to show them all what he was made of.
His standing orders were simply to monitor what was happening at this place on the screen—a Wyoming ranch a hundred miles away, thought to be harboring persons of interest in a suspected cell of domestic terrorists—and to follow established protocol should anything unusual develop.
In his experience, warfare was generally nothing but crushing monotony right up until the moment when everything explodes. This assignment had been no different, and now it looked like that moment of explosion had suddenly arrived.
Earlier in the day, Brassell had ordered his spotter drone to drop down below the cloud base. The view improved slightly at that level, but the picture it provided still wasn’t adequate. On his own initiative he’d then vectored in two MQ-1 Predators from their positions on another nearby assignment, one displayed on an adjacent screen labeled PIERCE. Both aircraft were company-owned and at full combat readiness. Their more advanced sensors would improve Brassell’s strategic picture even from their higher altitudes.
This move had felt a bit like an overreaction but the people minding the budget actually encouraged such overuse of resources and equipment. The Talion contract was practically open-ended and everything designated “antiterrorism” was being handed a fat blank check from the taxpayers, so there was really no downside. In fact, a cynical saying had developed among some Talion employees with regard to using drones: “When in doubt, send three out.”
But his order didn’t seem like a waste at all—not anymore. In fact, the decision to send in more surveillance and muscle began to look like a stroke of George S. Patton genius once the shooting started.
A local law enforcement vehicle had been parked in the Merrick driveway for a couple of hours, and as the officers were leaving the house it appeared that two of them were suddenly gunned down in the doorway. Brassell had been reclining in his chair at the time and this sight was startling enough that he spilled his double espresso down his front and completely missed any clue as to where the hostile fire had come from.
The infrared cameras immediately picked out a number of distinctive flashes: armed positions responding from outside. No Talion forces had been ordered to attack the place—those must be other officers, he thought, possibly state and local police. That had to be it; they would have been placed out there to cover those who’d been sent into the house, perhaps in a now-failed attempt to negotiate a surrender.
A full-on gun battle was soon under way. Intelligence had obviously been correct about what this remote compound housed. Judging from the firepower now responding from inside, these Merrick people must have a substantial arsenal and enough trained men to defend themselves against all but the most heavily armored ground troops.
At first the assault seemed evenly matched but gradually the aggressors in the house and the outbuildings had begun to gain the upper hand. As he watched, the surrounding land became littered with motionless casualties and clearly the tide had turned. These Merricks and their terrorist accomplices appeared to be winning.
Brassell grabbed his tablet and called up the field action authorization for this engagement. Surveillance was all that was explicitly authorized, but people were dying out there—he had to do something.
The intel was rock-solid and all required signatures were in place, right from the top; he had every reason to act. Law enforcement officers were already down, the target personnel were high-value, their liberty-spouting survivalist ideology fit the far-right-wing-militia profile to a tee, and from what he could see on the screen, their actions were clearly murderous and unprovoked. The fugitives thought to be hiding there were preapproved for a signature strike, and what he saw unfolding was a clear enough indication that the ringleaders were indeed inside, just as suspected. It all added up.
He knew it was time for a command decision but still he hesitated.
Brassell thought back to a domestic-action seminar he’d taken in his early training as a contract commander here. The subject had been the Waco siege. The lesson from that day had been clear-cut: Don’t let this happen on your watch. A prolonged and public debacle like the one that happened down in East Texas was never to be allowed again.
It had taken a PR miracle to spin that fifty-one-day siege and the subsequent killing of seventy-five American men, women, and children into a righteous government raid on a bunch of suicidal religious nuts who got what they deserved. But from that day forward, we were to err on the side of rapid and decisive action, far away from the attention of the press. Act with authority and the results could then be announced—or rewritten, or hidden, as the case may be—once the outcome was known and everything was back under control.
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“Scramble the A-10,” Brassell said, and a nearby runner set off to make it so.
By the time the bird was in the air the gunfire on the screen had long since died down and there was no movement at all from outside. Next he saw that a number of trucks were leaving the area, traveling off-road and then splitting up into a larger and a smaller convoy going in two different directions.
At the moment all he had were cameras in the strike zone. “Where are my armed drones?” Brassell barked.
“Still inbound, sir, maybe twenty minutes out.”
“Damn it,” he spat, and he’d begun to pace. “What about the Thunderbolt?”
“About the same, twenty minutes.”
“Okay.” He hurried to the drone pilots’ station and pointed out the fleeing vehicles. “Drop autopilot. I want you to shadow those trucks—”
“Which trucks? The ones going north or west?”
Before Brassell could answer he was stopped by what he saw on the screen.
A dazzling shaft of light was searching the sky in the video frame, and then the screen went nearly white as the swiveling beam found his drone. Immediately a dashed stream of bright yellow tracers shot up from one of the outbuildings toward the defenseless craft, which was hovering practically motionless as it labored against the strong headwind.
“Evade, evade, get out of there!” Brassell shouted, and the pilot pegged his throttle and slammed the joystick hard to the side. But the General Atomics Gnat wasn’t really built for speed. As the craft gently banked into its turn the picture shook and flashed and pixelated. Various alerts and critical warnings crowded the display as bullets tore through the airframe; the tilt of the view increased and then inverted and began to spiral downward. They all watched the sickening spin tighten and the ground rushing up until the screen flashed to static.
Brassell composed himself. “Redirect the Predators. I want them after those trucks—”
“You’ve got a fuel problem, Kyle,” one of the pilots answered. “Both those birds are going to have to turn back just about the time they get there.”
This was information that might have been useful an hour earlier, Brassell thought. But he was determined to make the best of the decaying situation and rise above the mental limits of his staff. When this was over nobody would be able to say that Kyle Brassell took a major terrorist incident lying down.
Without any eyes-in-the-sky those fleeing trucks would soon be long gone. He’d have to decide later how to deal with their escape in his report, but it certainly seemed wisest at the moment to avoid mentioning them at all. There was still a victory to be had, of course. That house and its outbuildings were standing tall and vulnerable, right where they’d always been.
“What’s the load-out on that A-10?” he asked.
“It’s an air-to-surface package; he’s got six CBU-87s, cluster bombs.”
“Good deal. Tell the pilot he’s weapons-free on that whole property. Let’s have a tight overlapping spread on those ’87s, blacktop the place, and if anything’s left he should take care of it with a cannon pass or two. Now what about your Predators?”
“They’ve got four Hellfires between them—”
“Okay. As soon as you get to five miles out, lock targets and let fly and then turn back to base for refueling.” Brassell walked up to the screen and pointed to the main structures on an aerial photograph that had been shot days before. “That’s your objective. Now let’s light them up.”
• • •
When the gun battle was done and all was quiet again, Esther Merrick had gathered her family, called the roll, and made her last wishes known.
Over their strong objections all her surviving kin had been sent on north toward safety as Molly Ross headed to the west toward California to pick up the last member of her team—or to kidnap him, if necessary. After that she would go east to take this fight back to the enemy.
All of them had gone, then, except her eldest son. Despite the best appeal she could muster he would hear nothing of running away, being every ounce as stubborn and headstrong as the woman who’d raised him. She wouldn’t leave the land that had been her family’s home and heritage since her own grandmother was a child, and her son wouldn’t leave her to stand this ground alone.
He was tall beside her as she sat on their front porch in her rocking chair, her mother’s Bible in her hands, an old shotgun resting across her lap. It wasn’t the first time blood had been spilled in defense of this spread, though perhaps it would be the last.
In any case, the trespassers who’d come to slaughter her family and friends were now all gone to judgment. Before too long she would be bound for glory herself, and while Christian charity forbade her to hate, if asked at the pearly gates to testify for these men she’d have a very difficult time conjuring up a forgiving word. Evil is evil, and no good comes of calling it by any other name.
From the direction of a low rumble off in the distance, five dim and moving points of illumination, like traveling stars, appeared in the darkened sky.
And so the end was on its way.
Esther Merrick had always saved a particular Psalm for those rare times when courage threatened to fail her. She raised her small hand and her son took it gently into his own.
“The Lord is my light and my salvation,” she whispered; “whom shall I fear?”
“The Lord is the stronghold of my life,” her son answered; “of whom shall I be afraid?”
The missiles came then, a second ahead of their terrible sound, and by the time the next and finishing wave of airborne destruction arrived to send everything physical back to ashes and dust, all souls once present at the Merrick ranch had already flown far beyond.
Chapter 43
Virginia Ward had seen the glow of a distant, raging fire from several miles away, but it wasn’t until she’d driven up to the military-style roadblock that she finally let herself believe what was burning out there.
The Department of Homeland Security had blanketed the entire region with yet another nonspecific elevated terror alert, letting citizens know only that they should stay at home under curfew and await further announcements. Uniformed men at the checkpoint ahead were turning back the sparse traffic and pulling aside selected vehicles for searches and questioning of the drivers and passengers.
As she reached the front of the line she saw that these men were armed and organized but only a few were actually state or local police. The rest were contractors, all sporting the Talion insignia and behaving as if they had every legal right to do what they were doing.
After showing her identification she waited in her rental car as they huddled to discuss how to deal with such an unexpected visitor. After a number of tense calls up the food chain, at last an okay was handed back down.
She was given a coded site pass to hang around her neck and a few of the men directed her around the barrier and waved her onward toward the ranch. An escort van pulled out behind her, the nonofficial yellow strobes on its rooftop flashing all the way.
On her flight into the area Virginia had reviewed a backgrounder that included many photographs of the Merrick property. What she saw when she pulled up at the outer fence line bore no resemblance to those pictures at all.
The area was lit with portable banks of lights, smaller versions of the arrays one might see at an outdoor sporting event. All she could see under the glare was a cratered, blackened wasteland. To her right a few structures were still in flames, including what was left of the main barn and the shells of other smaller buildings. The fire trucks and EMS vehicles that had responded were being held away at the far perimeter. Evidently it had been determined that nothing and no one here would be worth the risk of saving.
A large number of corpses were scattered around the grounds, apparently lying right where they’d fallen, most with weapons still in their hands or by their sides. Next to each of them someone had placed a body bag topped with a weighted paper form and a Ziploc container for evidence or pe
rsonal effects. As yet, however, it seemed that nobody had made a priority of tending any further to the dead.
Virginia got no special attention, either; these workers looked past her like she wasn’t even there. Instead nearly all the suited-up personnel were sifting through the smoldering wreckage where the family house had once been.
She walked slowly into the scene, picking out details, trying to roll back time in her mind’s eye to let the ruins tell their tale.
A sheriff’s vehicle had been here for a while before the shooting started—it was parked close to the residence, where a welcome visitor might stop. A deputy was dead at the wheel, clearly shot through the window as he sat waiting. The shotgun beside him was still in its mount, his sidearm was holstered, the radio mike was in its clip. He hadn’t been expecting any trouble until it crept up and hit him from behind.
It occurred to her that the vehicle’s always-on dash-cam would be perfectly positioned to show a replay of much of the incident. As she bent by the broken window she saw that the camera had been ripped out by the wires and the car’s black-box video recorder was gone along with it.
Virginia stood again and took a long look around.
As before, it seemed that no one was paying her any mind, though without any doubt she felt eyes on her from behind the darkened glass of the van that had followed her in. She walked on again, feeling more alone than ever and distinctly aware of the comforting weight of the pistol at her hip.
Three bodies were outside the house near the frame of a shattered window. One of them was shot but the other two had their throats ripped out; it looked like they’d lost a fight with either a large guard dog or a small bear. In all likelihood this spot was where it started, with the family inside their home, a company of bad guys creeping up to surround them from cover, and these three amateur assassins coming in close to a ground-floor window, maybe with a specific target in mind.