An Undeclared War (Countdown to Armageddon Book 4) (4 page)

     She was shot because one of the bastards scored a lucky shot. The bullet came flying through just as she rose to take her shot.

     Joyce died instantly. It was mercifully quick. As she lay in Hannah’
s arms, Hannah looked to Linda in agony. Hannah was a trained midwife. She’d seen tragic death before when childbirth occasionally went horribly wrong. But this was the first time a friend ever died in her arms.

     Linda raised her weapon to the firing port, as much angry as sad. She fired three more shots in the general direction of the unseen shooters. Then she ducked down again and put a hand on Joyce’s bloody face.

     She closed Joyce’s eyelids, very tenderly, although surely knowing she was beyond pain.

    
Jordan’s frantic voice came over the radio.

     “What’s going on in there? Is everybody okay?”

     Linda calmly responded.

     “It’s Joyce. She’s dead.”

     It was said. No other words were needed.

     Tom cursed and swore a renewed vengeance on the attackers outside.
Jordan threw his radio across the room, then raised up and fired blindly into the woods several times, although there were still no targets on his side of the house.

     Zachary, still watching the back of the house, sat in stunned silence.

     Sara, manning the base radio and security monitors from the basement, began to sob. And the children with her, seeking shelter from the chaos, took her cue and wept openly.

     But there was little time for mourning while the battle still raged.

     Linda went back up to quickly scan the area out front, but saw no targets.

    
Jordan also quickly went up, and was ducking down again when he caught a glimpse of movement. He quickly rose again to see three men running across the open field, in a wild attempt to make it to the house.

     He quickly
fired and clipped one of them just above the right knee, sending him reeling. He ducked back down.

     The other two made it to the house. Their wounded comrade, writhing in the dirt fifty yards from the house, was a sitting duck.

     Any other time, Jordan would have had some serious reservations about firing a second shot into a wounded man.

     But not today. He and Joyce had bonded during the previous months. And he now considered her a second mom.

     He rested his rifle on the ledge of the firing port in the general direction he knew the man was. Then he took a deep breath and rose, placing his eye on the scope and acquiring his target.

    
Jordan’s bullet flew true, tearing apart the man’s heart and killing him instantly.

     And
Jordan felt no hint of remorse.

     Sara, on the other hand,
went numb. She considered herself Jordan’s wife. There was no preacher around to make it official, but they bore a child together and shared the same bed. So it was about as official as it was going to be.

     Sara watched the shooting unfold on the surveillance monitors. She knew her husband had just taken his first life. But instead of being horrified, she was supremely proud of him. Because she felt the same way he did.

     That bastard might well have been the one who killed Joyce.

     Sara could see the invading force
on camera for the first time. Until the three men broke free from the tree line, they’d done an excellent job of staying behind cover.

     Now, though, she was finally able to lend a hand.

     By watching the surveillance monitors, she could plainly see the two men against the house.

     “
Jordan, the other two are directly below your window. They probably sense that you can’t get enough angle to shoot at them. They are just standing below the window, looking up at your location. They appear to be arguing.”

    
Jordan didn’t know what to do. But Tom did.

     Tom took two shots at the spot in the shrubs where he’d seen the sun reflected off of something. Then he put his rifle down and scampered in
to the bedroom with Jordan.

     Without so much as a word, Tom drew his handgun from his hip holster and stretched his entire arm through the firing port, through the broken window and the window frame. Then he pointed it straight down
toward the ground below and emptied the magazine.

     He was shooting blindly, but fairly effectively under the circumstances.

     His third shot caught one of the men dead center on top of his head, traveled downward through the man’s neck, through his heart, and lodged in his abdomen.

     He never knew what hit him.

     Sara was back on the radio.

     “You got one of them. The other one is running, along the side of the
fence toward the pond. He’s holding his arm. I think you may have gotten him too.”

     Tom didn’
t wait for an attaboy. He ran back out of the room in a flash and back to his own battle station, leaving Jordan a hell of a story to tell his grandchildren some day.

-6
-

     In the speeding patrol car, just a few minutes away now, the four reinforcements were frantic. It had been over an hour since the battle began.

     And they were painfully aware that a lot of death and misery can happen in an hour.

     John had had them open up the gun cases from his closet, to find they contained what looked very similar to the AR-15s each of them carried.

     “Those aren’t fancy. But they’re a lot more deadly. They just look like generic versions of the ARs,
without the pretty stocks and handgrips. But they’re actually military M-16s.”

     Scott smiled.

     “Does that mean they’re fully automatic?”

     “Yes. That’s exactly what it means.”

     “Where the hell did you get them?”

     “In the early days of the blackout, I took them off of some looters who were dragging them out of the National Guard armory. I could have turned them into the police armory for safekeeping until somebody from the Army came by to claim them. But then I thought they might come in handy
for Hannah and I when we had to fight off looters. I figured these types of weapons were already on the streets. And the best way to fight fire is with fire.”

     “How d
o we switch them?”

     “Look at the fire selector switch. Your AR has only two options: safe and fire.

     “The M-16 has three options: safe, fire and auto. On auto, it will continue to fire as long as you hold the trigger.

     “Be careful, though. Only fire in short bursts. Three or four rounds. That’ll be enough to sweep your target area if you miss on your first shot. But it won’t run you out of ammo. If you hold that trigger down too long it’ll empty your whole magazine.”

     “Now lift up the sponge liners in the back of the gun cases. One of them has an added bonus.”

     Robbie and Randy did as instructed. Scott, in the
front passenger seat looking over his shoulder, couldn’t see what Robbie and Randy were looking at. But he could tell they were impressed.

     Randy let out a slow whistle.
Robbie merely said, “Holy shit.”

     Scott asked, “What? What is it?”

     Robbie held up one of four hand grenades.

     “Also taken from the looters at the National Guard armory. I kept them because you never know when something like that might come in handy. Have any of you guys ever used one of those before?”

     John checked his rear view mirror to see the back seat passengers shaking their heads.

     Scott said, “No, but I can’t think of a better time to learn.”

     “Sorry, Scott,” John said. “I hate to pull rank on you, but that’s a big negative. These things are nothing to mess around with. If you hold it too long or throw it wrong, you or the good guys die. I used those in my Marine Corps days. It’s been awhile, but I doubt they’ve changed much.”

     Scott keyed his microphone and said, “Joyce, Linda, Tom, this is Scott. Do you read me?”

     He paused, but heard only static.

     “If you can read me, we’re on our way. Hang in there.”

     As they were hauling ass out of San Antonio, Scott had replaced the batteries in the radio he had with him when he left the compound months before. Under ideal conditions, the radio was supposed to have a range of about twenty miles or so.

     But he couldn’t wait that long. About thirty miles out, he started calling over the radio every couple of minutes.

     He hoped the silence didn’t mean everyone was dead or captured.

     No. He wouldn’t allow his mind to go there. It meant he was still out of range, and that’s all it meant.

     Robbie said, “We need a game plan before we go charging in there like gangbusters. If they don’t know we’re coming, your people might mistake us for the bad guys.”

     “Joyce, Linda, Tom, this is Scott. Do you read me?”

     Suddenly, everyone in the house heard Sara say over the radio, “Scott, I can hear you. Where are you?”

     “Sara, is that you?”

     “Yes.”

     “Sara, what’s going on?”

     “They’re shooting at us. They’re all over the place. We’re shooting back, and we’ve shot some of them. But there are still more out there.”

     He could sense the panic in her voice.

     “You’re doing good, honey. Are you watching the monitors and sharing what you see?”

     “Yes, sir.”

     “Good. We’ll be there in about fifteen minutes or so. There are four of us, and we’ve got some heavy firepower. Joyce, Linda, Tom, which direction do we approach from?”

     There was no answer.

     Scott didn’t realize that he was barely in range, and none of the others could hear him with the stubby antennas on their handheld radios. The base station that Sara monitored, however, was linked via coaxial cable with the array of antennas on the ham radio tower.

     Scott tried again.

     “Joyce, Linda, Tom, from which direction do we approach?”

     Still nothing.

     Sara said, “I guess I’m the only one who can hear you. Tom and Linda, Scott is coming with reinforcements. He wants to know which direction to come from.”

     Suddenly, the one-sided conversation the others had been listening to made sense.

     And luckily, Scott didn’t think to ask young Sara why she didn’t call out to Joyce as well as the others.

     Tom quickly got on his radio and shouted, “Tell them to come from the north, through my place. Tell them there’s a break in the fence where they made entry.”

     Sara relayed the message, word for word, to Scott.

     Tom went on, “Tell them to watch out for a pit filled with punji sticks, and to be careful in case they left someone guarding my place.”

     Tom had trouble hiding the jubilation in his voice.

     What a difference a few minutes can make.

     Tom continued to watch the stand of shrubs where he’d seen the flash of light a few minutes before. He’d taken four blind shots into the area, but there was no movement there now.

     Either he’d been very lucky and shot the men who were hiding there, or they’d scattered at his first shot.

     Between the two possibilities, he considered the second the more likely.

     Linda and Hannah, at the front of the house, had their hands full. Linda was holding her own against two men who
kept moving back and forth behind the tree line, taking a shot, then crawling to a new location. She’d come close a couple of times, but had missed because they were moving too fast to line up a good shot.

     T
om heard the shots coming from Linda’s position and called out, “Linda, do you need any help over there?”

     “No. I’m keeping
them in the woods. And I’ll get the bastards eventually.”

     Linda, like everyone else
, was furious.

     Hannah got on her radio. “Linda and I are running out of ammo. Does anybody have any to spare?”

     Jordan called out, “I’m down to my last two magazines.”

     Tom was being more judicious with his shots.

     “I’ve got three extra mags. Zachary, are things still quiet at the back of the house?”

     “Yes. I’m on my way.”

     Zachary ran to Tom’s location first and without a word took the three magazines Tom handed to him. Zachary was surprised by how heavy the ninety rounds were. He took them into the bedroom at the front of the house where Linda and Hannah were huddled behind the plywood barricade.