Half Past Midnight (15 page)

I looked at Megan. Her right eye puffed shut, and the cheek beneath was swollen, but her attitude remained defiant. She’d had worse from tournaments. “Down and out.” I said in a conversational tone.

She furrowed her brow in puzzlement.

“Twelve, down and out,” I said just as calmly. The position of her feet and hands told me she was already prepared to execute the knife defense. What I was trying to tell her was that she needed to drop down immediately after she had done so. She needed to get down and out.

“What the hell does that mean?” the man asked. Megan’s expression asked the same question.

Well, why not?
“It means she needs to drop down and get over here after she executes a number twelve.”

Comprehension dawned on Megan’s face, and she set her weight. All she needed was a distraction. I smiled at the guy. “Don’t worry about it, just hurry up and kill her.”

Now he was really confused. “Wha—?”

It was the last thing he ever said. One of the main things I drilled into my students was that the human brain has about a half-second reaction time. In other words, if the brain was busy doing something else, it took that long to react to new stimulus. As soon as he opened his mouth to speak, Megan knew he was concentrating on something other than her. With the distraction she needed, she shifted her weight and twisted her head, swiftly bringing her left hand to grasp the thumb of his knife hand, pulling it over her left shoulder as her right hand slapped behind his elbow and drove the knife into his own throat.

His throat fountained scarlet, and he instinctively threw himself backward as Megan dove for the ground, but it was too late for him. One of the men closest made a grab at her, but missed. For a heart stopping moment, I saw every gun in the group shift toward us. Then Ken opened up with the machine gun, and I saw five of them die as they turned to face the new threat. The others dropped to the ground as I dove and yanked the smoke bomb off of my belt, leaving the retaining ring dangling from the pouch snap. As smoke began to billow out, I tossed it into the crowd. The smoke washed over them as they shot blindly into the brush from which Ken had fired. Megan and I belly-crawled away as quickly as possible, hidden now by the advertised “fifty thousand cubic feet of thick white smoke.” The minute we hit the trees, we scrambled to our feet and started running.

It would only take a few seconds for them to realize that Ken was no longer shooting at them. The plan had been for him to fire a quick burst, doing as much damage as possible, and then to leave the area before they could get a fix on his location. After that, he would follow my earlier route and meet us back on the trail.

Megan and I tore down the trail and rounded the first curve. I saw the carbine leaning against the tree where I had left it and grabbed it on the run. As we rounded the next curve, I grabbed Megan’s shoulder and pulled her off of the trail to the right, where we ran only a few yards through the brush before kneeling in some scrub to hide and pant for breath.

Handing her the pistol from my holster, I fumbled my belt pouch open to grab another smoke bomb. Then I swung my carbine up to cover the trail. “Ken should be along at any time,” I gasped. “Don’t shoot him.”

She didn’t waste her breath on an answer, just nodded. Sure enough, ten seconds later, Ken came trotting through the trees. He slipped quickly and silently through the trees and, as I watched him, I realized my newfound friend had some hidden facets. If I hadn’t known approximately where to watch, I probably would have missed him altogether. I whistled lightly to get his attention as he crossed the trail, and he veered over to squat next to us.

“Good to see you back with the good guys.” Ken reached out and gingerly touched her swollen cheek. “Looks like they popped you pretty good, though.”

She winced a little at his touch. “It’s all right,” she said. “He won’t pop anyone ever again.”

Ken nodded and turned to me. “Okay, now what?”

“You still think we can get all of them?” I was honestly beginning to doubt it.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But we can’t lead them back home.”

I worried about the same thing. We couldn’t lead them home. We couldn’t take them head on. Our only chance was to ambush them, and finding a way to do that now would be tough. They would be watching for us.

Megan complicated the situation with an observation. “What about Mrs. Robertson? We still have to get her out of there.”

Ken and I glanced at one another. In the heat of the battle, we had both forgotten Pat Robertson, still tied to a table in her backyard. “Let’s get them out here,” I said.

Ken shook his head. “We can’t take them on like this. There are at least eight of them left, and they’re all looking for us right now.”

“All I said was to get them out here.” I grinned. “I didn’t say we were going to wait on them. We fire a few shots to get their attention, get them moving down the trail, then circle back the way we came. Back to the house. You know the trails; they don’t.”

He thought for a moment. “Well, let’s get them out here.”

I smiled wearily. “Is there an echo around here?” I raised the carbine. “Everyone ready?”

When they nodded, I fired four or five shots into the air. Less than a minute later, we heard the sounds of a pack of inept woodsmen crackling through the brush. As soon as I saw movement, I tossed out two more of the smoke bombs and fired. I was out of effective range, but I wanted them to know exactly where we were before we were within range of their weapons. Some of them returned fire; others dove for cover. Within moments, smoke obscured everything. We turned and ran down the trail making enough noise for a blind man to follow. I stopped once to fire back into the smoke, and yelled, “Back to the house! Back to the house! Hurry!” We all turned abruptly to the right, ran about fifty yards, and dropped into the thickest briar patch we could find.

The smoke bombs burned for two more minutes before the cloud slowly began fading. It was difficult to see through the brush of our hiding place but, after a minute or two, we could hear the marauders cautiously moving past. For a second, I entertained the wild idea that it would be the perfect time to impetuously spring to our feet spewing bullets in all directions in a glorious attempt to take out the last of them at a single stroke. Unfortunately, I could tell from the sounds of their passage that they were much too spread out. They were all around us, whispering orders designed to “herd them back to their house.”

We would never be able to get them all. Though the wait was maddening, I sat silently in the briars with Megan and Ken, ignoring the multitude of scratches, bruises, and abrasions our nasty little game of hide and seek produced.

A few minutes later, when we were finally sure that they were past us, we raced back to the Robertson’s home. Ken reached the house first and rushed straight for the back porch.

“Damn! Damn them all!”

I rounded the corner of the house to find Ken kneeling next to the table to which Pat Robertson was tied. As I neared, I could see the bruised and bloody condition she was in. He looked up as Megan and I came toward him. “She’s dead.” Anguish lined his features as he spoke. Pain for the woman and her husband… for his neighbors, his friends. “The filthy animals beat her to death,” he sobbed.

I hesitated a moment, then walked over and laid a hand on his shoulder. “Ken? Ken, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, man. But we have to go.”

He was unresponsive, his grief overwhelming.

“Ken! I understand, but the others are still on that trail. We don’t have time for this.”

“What the hell do you mean, no time?” He slung my hand violently from his shoulder and stood. “Pat’s dead. John’s dead. We didn’t save anyone. All this,” his arm swept out to indicate the bodies littering the area, “was for nothing!” He stepped over to the nearest of the bodies and kicked it. I heard the distinct cracking sound of breaking ribs. He kicked it again and again, caving in an entire side of the corpse. The whole time we could hear him sobbing and saying, “All for nothing!”

The violence of Ken’s reaction startled me. I really didn’t know what to say to get through to him. I was about to try to reason with him when Megan stepped in.

“Where did the rest of them go, Ken?” She asked it quietly, simply, and somehow it got through to him. He stopped the destruction of the corpse and turned to face her, uncertainty on his face.

“Isn’t that trail they’re on the same trail we took from the house?” she prodded. “Where will they end up if they follow it all the way out? Back at the house, right? Back to your wife and my mom and brother.”

The change was immediate. He wiped his eyes. “Okay.” He sniffed, and I could see the difference in his eyes. He was back with us. For now. “Yeah, let’s finish this. How long ago did they pass us on the trail?”

“Nearly five minutes,” I estimated.

“Do you think we can catch them in time?” Megan asked. Five minutes on those trails could translate to more than a mile, and the distance grew as we spoke.

“We can do better than that.” I jerked my thumb at their truck. “If we can find the keys.”

When the interior of the truck failed to yield anything but broken glass, the windshield having been one of the casualties of the fire fight, we had no choice but to search the bodies, something none of us were thrilled about. Feeling sympathy for Megan, I gave her a choice. She could go and retrieve the crossbow and rifle she had lost earlier, along with as many other weapons as she could find lying around, or she could help search the bodies. She took one look at the men in the back of the truck and left to find her weapons.

Meanwhile, Ken and I readied ourselves for the grisly work ahead. “Which one do you want?” he asked.

I noticed that one of the four in the truck bed had a sunburn on his left arm, as if he’d had that arm exposed to the intense sunlight. The right arm was fine. “This one.” I was pretty sure I had found the driver.

Sure enough, his right pants pocket clinked when I patted it. Digging the keys out still proved to be a nasty business, though. The man had evidently been drinking for quite some time before Ken shot him, if the amount of urine staining his pants was any indication. We got the keys, and I started to drag the bodies out of the truck.

“Leave ‘em in the truck.” Ken’s voice was gruff. “I have an idea.”

I gave him a quizzical look but, after his earlier outburst, I wasn’t about to argue. Together, we rolled the bodies further into the bed of the truck and closed the tailgate. Megan returned with several rifles slung over her shoulders and, within minutes, we were flying down the road at eighty miles an hour.

I had never been a conservative driver, but the way Ken slid and whipped around blind turns scared the hell out of me. “Think we’ll make it?” I shouted to be heard above the combined roars of the engine and the wind screaming through the broken windshield.

Ken nodded. “No problem!”

“Think we’ll make it in one piece?”

He grinned maliciously and eased the speed all the way down to seventy-five. “Better?”

Before I could reply, he slowed abruptly and swerved right at a mailbox marked “Kindley.” The sudden turn slammed Megan into me and me into Ken. I was just getting ready to shout a commentary on his driving skills when he slammed on the brake, throwing us into the dash. The entire trip had lasted less than four minutes.

“End of the line, folks. Megan hurry and open the garage door. We don’t want them to recognize the truck.”

She jumped out and hastened to comply. I scrambled out after her and ran to the front door, which was of course, unlocked. As Ken pulled the truck into the garage, I rushed to the fireplace and opened the flue. Our hastily constructed plan called for us to attract the attention of the approaching bandits. As far as they knew, we were just ahead of them. Hopefully, they still thought they were driving us back to our home. We needed them to think this was it.

We started a fire and pulled the four bodies out of the back of the truck, dragging them inside through the garage door. We propped them up at various windows behind their own rifles. By the time we finished, from the outside of the house, it looked as if someone was standing guard, waiting for trouble.

“This is what you wanted them for?”

“Yeah.”

I shuddered. “What exactly did you do in the Marines?”

“Whatever needed to be done.” He turned away without further comment.

Ken and I took positions in the brush around the house. Megan climbed a massive oak and hid in its huge branches above a small fork in the trail. From there, she would have a perfect sniper’s view of the two possible routes to the house. I ducked into some bushes on the side of the trail nearest the edge of the clearing. Ken handed me one end of a roll of kite string he had found in the Kindley’s house and ran further down the trail unwinding it behind him.

We would wait until the bandits were busy watching the house, then Megan would start things rolling with some strategically placed shots. Ken and I had opted to depend upon our knives and surprise rather than firearms since our positioning would put us in each other’s line of fire.

So we waited. And waited. It reminded me of the night of the bombs. Each time I checked my watch, I expected to find that ten minutes had slipped by. Instead, only two had passed. My imagination kicked into overdrive. They must have slipped around us. Maybe they realized that we’d circled back to the Robertson’s, and they had turned back after us. I knew a thousand things could have gone wrong, and I convinced myself that at least one of them had.

Then I heard them. Five miles of hiking through the woods had obviously not improved their stalking skills at all. If anything, they sounded louder than ever. Many of them dragged their feet through the leaves and pine needles, stumbling over roots and branches as they walked, while others whispered complaints to their companions. A group of four of them came within five yards of where I squatted in the bushes between two trees. They peered out of the trees at the Kindley house, saying something about smoke, but I couldn’t tell if they were worried about my smoke bombs, or if they were talking about the smoke from the fireplace. I didn’t care, as long as they kept their attention focused on the house.