Walking in the Rain (Book 4): Dark Sky Thunder (22 page)

Seeing my chance, I reloaded the M4 again, dropping the partially expended magazine, and started punching targets. With the Hummer to my left on a ninety-degree angle, the camouflaged men began to melt under the onslaught. That armor might technically be proof against 7.62x51, but three or four rounds to the torso managed to knock them down. And Mike was aiming at the thighs and legs. Since the front of the house formed my background, I was careful to pick my shots but Mike had no such problem as he steadily and methodically gunned down the last of the doomed attackers.

BANG!

With my hearing nearly shot from the constant hammer of gunfire, I felt the bullet as much has heard it. The projectile came so close to my head that I could feel the heat seem to scorch my cheek. I dropped and rolled right, then tried to use my optics to spot the source of the shot.

Bingo, I breathed. There, falling back into the woods bordering the north side of the ranch, I saw two men leapfrogging away from the scene of the carnage. Through the scope, I saw the camo and took a shot. Missed. Shot again. Missed. Third round, leading the runner at four hundred yards, and I saw the man stumble, then fall. From the way he fell, I could tell the femur was broken by the way his midthigh seemed to hinge backwards. There was no joint there for sure.

When the cover shooter saw his partner stumble to the earth, I saw the rifle swing my direction even as I scrambled to acquire the target. We fired at the same time. He fired a three-round burst, then another before the sixth round from my rifle snapped his head back. Down, and hopefully out.

Slumping back to the ground, I loaded my last ready magazine and began scanning the scene of the battle. Despite the hammering my ears had endured from the near constant firing and the explosions, I could still hear screams. Some close, some sounding like they were from around the backside of the hill.

The Hummer continued to circle through the front yard and toward the Big House on the other side. I heard continuing fire coming from the vicinity and realized the fight was not over. Just moved on without me.
Jeez,
I wondered,
how many guys do they have?

As it turned out, counting the second force they tried to slip in the back way, it was seventy-two.

Rising to a hunched crouch, I shuffled up to the nearest dead and began stripping off magazine pouches in search of more ammunition. I saw two that looked to be still breathing and shot them in the face without pausing. I angled the shots to keep from messing up their Kevlar helmets.

On the second corpse, I found a long-bladed knife sheathed at the hip. Thinking it might come in handy later, I cut the scabbard loose and stuffed the rig in my bag. I might need to cut some throats before the day was done. Because in the back of my mind, I still had another mission to plan. According to one fairly unreliable source, my father and Sheriff Henderson were being held for a kangaroo court. Their lives might hang in the balance of how quickly I could get them out.

After a few weeks respite, the war had once more come to my home, and I fell back on my training. Both the formal stuff I got from my dad, and what I picked up on the road.

Topping off the satchel with more grenades, I slid the shoulder strap across my chest and went to follow the sound of the guns. Our shooters in the houses were keeping up their fire, but I calculated I could do more killing out here.

As that old saying goes, I’m in the business of killing, and business is good.

William “Wild Bill” Messner fought for the Ultimate Fighting Championship in Las Vegas when I was just a kid. I didn’t get to watch the fight at the time, but I did see it later on YouTube. He went in as the unbeaten challenger and took on a man mountain of a fighter with a reputation for early-round knockouts. After a brutal first two rounds, Uncle Billy got the beast in a submission hold and the tattooed behemoth finally tapped out. None of the viewers could tell my uncle won the match while barely able to stand on his nearly destroyed knee.

Uncle Billy retired as an undefeated champion after two knee surgeries and never looked back. He just took his fight to a new goal, and this was building a successful sports complex and gym in Dallas. He was family, but he was also a friend to me when I needed one in the worst way. And now he was dead. He’d died like a champion, too.

After the shooting finally stopped, I went in search of our missing personnel. Scott wasn’t missing, since I found him in the bunker. My friend had stayed at his post and fought to the end. He’d suffered shrapnel wounds as a result of a near miss from a missile that penetrated the thick walls of the structure, and Beth was grim faced as she worked feverishly to treat his multiple injuries. He might live, but his recovery would no doubt be long and painful. Others, like my uncle, were not so lucky.

Amy had been driving the Humvee for Mike, but she wasn’t the first pick. Connie, flighty and aloof Connie, had volunteered to dash across the distance to the machine shed first. Dad never counted on having a war wagon, and thus we’d made no plans to retrieve the uparmored machine. That was a mistake, and one we would no doubt rectify. Maybe dig a tunnel between the house and the shed over the winter. If we survived.

When the attacking force started hitting the house with rockets, or missiles, and he feared we might otherwise be overrun, Mike had bravely decided we needed the Hummer. He survived the mad dash, but Connie was cut down before she made it halfway across the open ground.

When Mike drove the Hummer up to the side door and asked for someone to run the rig while he operated the machine gun, Amy ran out without a moment’s hesitation. Lori related all this to me as we worked together to carry Uncle Billy’s body down from the fighting position he’d used on the backside of the hill.

“She just ran, Luke,” Lori said with a huff as we stepped off the incline and down onto the flat ground near the side door. The slope was steep but we both made it down without mishap. “As soon as Mike ended his call, she was out the door before anyone else could move.”

That Amy would rise to the challenge came as no surprise. She would do whatever it took to help, and to fit in here, even if it killed her. The thought made my stomach hurt again and I felt my rage rise, but the sight of my uncle’s lifeless, broken form stilled the anger. I was wasn’t angry at Amy, anyway, just the men who did this. They’d paid, and the ones behind them would continue to pay.

We laid Uncle Billy’s body down next to that of Connie and the new woman, Kate. Sadly, so wrapped up in my own grief, I barely noticed she was there. She’d scarcely had a chance to recover from one gunshot wound and now she was dead. I didn’t even know how she’d died.

And those weren’t our only deaths. Wes, my hunting buddy, was likewise laid out on a sheet over at the Skillman place, along with Rulon Sanders, another one of the Greenville group. They’d tried to slow down the invaders and ended up buying us time and giving warning of the second attacking force coming at us from the backside of the property.

The second attacking force came closer than I would care to think about. It was that force that killed my uncle even as he whittled down their numbers from his elevated perch. His position on the side of the hill gave him a commanding view of the backside of the property, and he managed to take out over a dozen attackers before their concentrated fire killed him. But again, he bought time, and we made them pay. Of course, nothing would bring back our dead.

“Motherfuckers,” Lori hissed and kicked at an offending hedge growing close to the door. “Why would they do this? We haven’t done anything. We just wanted to be left alone.”

“I’m not sure, Lori. But I think it has to do with something bigger. They took my dad, and the sheriff, too.”

“What? What are you saying?”

“I don’t have all the details, but I have a deputy that will tell us everything he knows. Everything.”

And he would, too.

Just then, I heard the door open and Amy came out, holding on to a struggling Helena. I honestly didn’t know the young woman that well. She was always the quiet one, the thoughtful, bright-eyed girl who seemed to take in everything, but was reserved with everyone except for Scott and her little brother, Kevin.

Now her mother was dead, and her boyfriend was fighting for his life. Amy seemed to be trying to restrain the older girl, but Helena wasn’t having any of that.

“Momma!” she shrieked, and broke away from Amy to hurl herself at the corpse. Mike and I had wrapped her in an old sheet, hiding the hideous wounds on her torso while leaving her untouched face exposed. She really did look like she was sleeping, unlike my uncle. His face, while relaxed by death, still seemed to be locked in an angry scowl. I recognized the look from his days in the ring.

I listened to the heartbroken girl’s plaintive wail and wished I could be somewhere else. Somewhere away from the dead and the hurting. I’d caused plenty of death in the last few months but seldom did I stick around to count the cost after.

Suddenly, Amy was in my arms and I reflexively wrapped her up in a tight embrace. Her head turned and her lips found mine in a burning, intoxicating kiss. She ended the kiss with a whimper, and for a moment, I felt myself tense at the idea she was hurt. But her wounds were on the inside.

“Oh, Luke,” she whispered. “I can’t believe it. They found us. What can we do now?”

“We do what we’ve been doing,” I declared, trying to make myself believe the lie. “We’ll take the fight to them. This ain’t over yet.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“There’s more of them. And they’ve got my dad and Sheriff Henderson.”

“Oh God, Luke.”

That about summed it up. The cold hard facts were just too hard to bear at the moment. With Uncle Billy dead, Dad gone, and Scott out, maybe forever, we were down some of our best fighters. Even with the new folks from Greenville, they only had Tim, Paul and Rueben left, and none of them were fully trained up. I know I was omitting the women, sexist that I am, but none of them struck me as being commando material either. Shit.

I thought about the Farrells but dismissed the idea immediately. They’d come over and helped with the mopping up portion of the affair, but they weren’t trained for what needed to be done, either. We would either need to hit the courthouse in overwhelming numbers or with a small group of sneaks going in after dark. I could probably do it, but the idea of Lee Farrell trying to scoot through the shadows didn’t fill me with a great deal of confidence. Or Alex Stanton, for that matter.

Mike came out and stood, looking down at my uncle for a moment. I saw tears in his eyes and I realized I was crying, too. I might not have been able to cry at my grandfather’s grave, but I guess standing over the corpse of my uncle meant I could finally release those emotions.

Placing an arm on my shoulder, Mike said something so soft I nearly missed it at first.

“I’m going with you.”

Shoot. I understood. My dad was like the brother Mike never had, and here was my father’s real brother, dead at his feet. But he couldn’t go. Gaddis might have served in Vietnam about a million years ago, but Mike was the only one we had here with real military experience this century. He had to hold the ranch. Now I just needed to get him to accept this fact. He knew the stakes as well as I did. He had a wife and two sons who needed him here to defend our home.

“Dad!” Austin, one of those sons, burst out of the door and nearly ran into me in his haste. “There’s a man on the radio. He’s calling for you. Says he’s with the Army and he’s here to help. And he said they’re about five minutes out.”

“Shit, I mean, shoot,” Mike muttered, then looked at me. I shrugged.

“Anybody I know is in Oklahoma or Arkansas,” I said simply.

“Did he ask for me by name, Austin?”

“No, Dad, he just wants to speak to whoever is charge at the Messner Ranch.”

Mike shot me a look and a grim smile tugged at his lips. “Well, Lucas, looks like you got someone wants to talk to you.”

“Me?”

“Hey, I’m just a guest. Maybe they can talk to your mom, but this sounds like something more your speed.”

“Yeah, right. Like they are going to talk to me. I’m a kid, remember.”

Then Mike got a serious look and turned my shoulders so I was facing the scattered bodies in the front of the house. We’d gathered up their weapons in big piles but had not yet started trying to haul the corpses to Boot Hill yet. The process would take hours we just didn’t have to spare at the moment.

Then he looked down at the cooling corpse of my uncle, and at the sheet-draped form of Connie. Helena was no longer sprawled across the body of her mother, but Amy was trying to get the bawling young woman up off the ground.

“Lucas, you go talk to this guy. He may be a crackpot or he may be with this same bunch of jackasses, or he might be the real deal. Find out what he wants and let’s get a plan together to go get your dad. And get a move on. We’re burning daylight.”

Yes. I could do that. Wiping at the tears still streaming down my face, I turned and headed for the house. One more thing to deal with. “On it. Call everybody back inside, though. And get the Hummer ready, just in case this is Round Two.”

“All right. Lee and Andy are up at the gate, so give them a head’s up.”

“I’m on it. Get everybody armed up and on the line. I’ve got my radio, so I’ll get word back. Or just listen for the shooting.”

With that, I turned to make the walk back toward the still smoldering outpost. I had my rifle and a full load out of magazines, plus the bag full of hand grenades. I thought I was ready for whatever this turned out to be. But I was wrong.

Despite my request that they make themselves scarce, Lee and Andy Ferrell elected to stick around as we waited for our guests to arrive. Since the gate was breached and the Suburbans were just sitting there with the keys still in the ignitions, we took a few minutes to rearrange the vehicles to not only further seal the entrance but to also offer us a bit more cover.