Battle Lines (The Survivalist Book 5) (14 page)

The crack of a gunshot sounded. Tanner instinctively tumbled down onto the floorboards, pulling Samantha along with him.

“Ouch,” she cried, bonking her elbow against one of the thwarts.

“Stretch out and lay flat to get as low as you can.”

She wiggled around until her legs were outstretched. Another gunshot sounded, and they heard a faint splash of water.

“Who’s shooting at us?” she asked.

Tanner propped up and scanned the far bank. He saw a muzzle flash, followed by another crack of the rifle firing. The shot went wide by nearly thirty feet. Whoever was shooting at them was a piss-poor marksman.

Tanner dropped back down.

“He’s almost directly ahead of us.”

“Okay, but why’s anyone shooting at us at all? We haven’t done anything.”

“The why doesn’t matter. We accept our circumstances and fight.”

“Right,” she said, sliding her hand over to grip her rifle. “But how are we going to hit someone hiding in the forest?”

It was a good question. Even against a novice shooter, they were at a disadvantage. Tanner reached over and unhooked a sheathed six-inch hunting knife from his pack. He stuck the thick leather into the front of his waistband.

“What are you doing?”

“I’ll swim downstream and come up behind them.”

“You’re going to leave me here all alone?”

“I suppose we could both just lie here hoping they run out of ammo.”

She snorted. “At least take your shotgun.”

“Can’t. The shells will get wet.” He reached over and squeezed her hand. “Once you hear me holler, row the boat to shore. Until then, stay down.”

“Okay, but be careful.”

He grinned. “You said it this time, right?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Uh-huh. I’ll see you in a few.”

Tanner sat up, threw one leg over the side, and rolled into the river.

Chapter 11  

“I must say that you handled that old man extremely well,” Mason said, ducking down and following Leila and Bowie through a narrow passage between two overturned cars.

“You mean after I stopped beating on him.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, after that.”

“Poor thing. Joe and Elsa should have gone together. It’s better that way sometimes.”

Mason’s mind drifted to thoughts of Ava, his girlfriend murdered by one of General Hood’s operatives during their hunt for President Glass’s daughter. While he had known Ava only a short time, he had come to love her, and love was not something he could let go of easily. Despite not having stumbled into the abyss of insanity like poor Joe, Mason thought he understood how such a plunge might be possible.

“Where’d you learn to fight like that?” he said, hoping to avoid any further discussion of relationships.

She slowed and carefully stepped across a set of railroad tracks.

“What can I say? I’m Israeli.”

He nodded. “While in the Rangers, I trained briefly with the Israeli Shayetet 13. They were tough and very well trained.”

“We are a country of incessant war. While not everyone is as fierce as our special forces, even the oldest woman knows how to put on a gas mask or slice a man’s throat.”

Before he could reply, she grabbed his sleeve and pulled him behind a car.

“What is it?”

“Look,” she said, leaning around and pointing. “Over there, by that building.”

Mason rose up and peeked through the car’s windows at a nondescript red brick building that sprawled for several hundred yards. A sign hung on the front wall that read
The J.M. Smucker Company, Home of JIF
. The letters for JIF were striped in red, blue, and green, the iconic colors of the peanut butter brand. In a small delivery lot near the front entrance sat one of the black SpeedHawk helicopters.

“What do you think they’re doing here?” she asked.

“Same as us, I suppose. Looking for Lenny.”

“At a peanut butter plant?”

He shrugged. “Maybe they know something we don’t.”

“Just one helicopter though.”

Mason scanned the skies. There was no sign of the second SpeedHawk. The soldiers had apparently split up to cover more ground. That meant they weren’t sure of exactly where to find Lenny either.

“This is a huge plant,” she said. “Maybe we should try to get ahead of them and see if we can find him first.”

“Good idea.”

Mason shuffled behind a Mayflower tractor-trailer that had flipped on its side and was now blocking Winchester Road. He lowered his pack to the ground and rummaged around until he found his flashlight.

“I’m going in to look around,” he said, shoving the flashlight into his back pocket. “It goes without saying that you should probably stay out here.”

Leila set her own pack down and pulled the Beretta from her waistband. The full-size semiautomatic handgun looked enormous in her small hand.

“I’ll come too. You might need help.”

“Can you even shoot that thing left-handed?”

She weighed the firearm.

“Not great, but if they get close enough…”

“You don’t strike me as a killer.”

She tilted her head and eyed him.

“I’m not a killer, but I am willing to defend myself.”

He nodded. “Fair enough.”

Mason poked his head around the trailer, and as he did, Bowie moved up beside him. He reached over and stroked the dog’s head.

“What do you say, boy? Do you feel like doing a little exploring?”

Bowie pressed up against him.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Leila shuffled a little closer and put her hand on his shoulder. That sort of tactile feedback was common among soldiers, but Mason was a little surprised to see her using it.

“How many soldiers do you think there are?” she asked.

“A standard squad would consist of two teams of five. Probably split evenly between the helicopters, if I had to guess.”

“That doesn’t sound like a fight we can win.”

“Maybe not, but we’re not here to kill these men. We’re here to find Lenny.”

“Right,” she said. “Let’s not give them any reason to consider us part of their mission.”

“Agreed.”

Mason studied the huge manufacturing plant. The helicopter was directly in front of the employee entrance, almost certainly the soldiers’ point of entry. The only other obvious way to get inside was a small hole that the tractor-trailer had punched through the side of the building.

“Let’s see if we can get in through there,” he said, pointing to the breach.

“I’ll be right behind you.”

Mason shuffled from car to car, careful to keep cover between him and the helicopter. It wasn’t out of the question that they might have left a man behind, not only to watch the helicopter but also to prevent anyone from flanking the rest of the team. Bowie stayed close by his side, and Leila followed a few paces to the rear. As he got closer, Mason saw that the hole was only about three feet across—a tight fit even without his backpack. What remained of the brickwork looked tenuous, but he thought that by hugging the edge of the truck, they could probably slip through.

He stopped and crouched down on one knee, his rifle trained on the dark hole. Before he could decide on the safest way to enter, Bowie plowed ahead into the darkness. After a few seconds, he poked his snout back out, officially pronouncing it safe.

Mason shooed him back and shimmied in through the narrow hole. He stopped a few feet inside, offering as small a silhouette as possible. The sudden change in lighting left him momentarily blind, and his sense of smell was overwhelmed with the odor of burnt peanuts. Leila came up behind him, but as she worked her way through the hole, her shoulder bumped one of the bricks overhead. Almost immediately, the wall started to collapse. She dove forward, taking Mason with her onto the cold concrete floor.

When the cave-in finally subsided, a pile of bricks and mortar blocked the small hole. A cloud of dust floated over Mason and Leila, and they both waved their hands and coughed a few times. The room was now completely dark, and Bowie started to whine.

“It’s all right, boy,” Mason said, rolling up to his knees. He reached out and felt for Leila, finding soft hair and the warm skin of her shoulders. “You okay?”

She rolled over onto her back, and his hands brushed across her breasts. Rather than protest, she slid her uninjured hand into his and used it to sit up. Mason felt her heart pounding against her chest as he gently pulled her forward.

“I’m fine,” she whispered. “But that was a little too close.”

“My commander used to say that close calls are there to remind us to be thankful for all the things that
don’t
happen.”

She leaned even closer, and he felt the heat radiating off her body. Her face was only a few inches from his, and her skin held a musky odor that was as unique as it was beautiful.

“I’ve always thought they’re there to remind us that every moment is precious.”

Before Mason could say anything more, Bowie ruined the moment by pressing his way between them.

“Where do you think we are?” she said, finally releasing his hand to hold the dog back.

“I don’t know. Let’s see.”

Mason clicked on his flashlight and swept it across the room. The warehouse was enormous, easily spanning the length of a football field in both directions. On one side sat dozens of white tote bags, each standing nearly as tall as a man and neatly aligned in front of a high bay door. On the other side of the room were forklifts, empty pallets, and a huge set of double doors, leading further into the plant.

“It looks like a receiving area,” he said, standing up and brushing himself off. He reached down and helped Leila to her feet. “From the looks of it, this is where they bring in the peanuts.”

“Do you think the soldiers have already been here?”

Mason studied the exits. The rollup door was secured to the floor, and the large double doors remained closed. There was a smaller door that looked like it led out to an office corridor, but he saw no signs of anyone’s passing.

“It doesn’t look like it.”

Bowie wandered over to inspect the giant white tote bags, and Mason and Leila followed. A black stamp on the side of the bag read
Gross Weight: 1 Ton
. The dog sniffed one of the bags and then sneezed, trying to clear the scent from his nostrils. Mason stepped closer and patted the side of the bag. It was hard and bumpy, as if filled with millions of tiny pebbles. The top of the bag was open to the air, and four heavy lifting loops stood upright at its corners.

He reached over the top of the bag and scooped out a handful of shelled peanuts. The nuts felt shriveled from having sat for weeks in a room that was no longer temperature controlled. He brought the handful to his nose and took a quick sniff. They smelled like sour milk, boiled cabbage, and sweaty sneakers all rolled into one. He tossed them back into the bag and brushed off his hands.

“Rancid.”

“Shame,” she said, rubbing her hands across the surface of the tote. “This could have fed a lot of hungry people.”

Bowie was already making his way through the maze of bags, sniffing them as he went, but even he had yet to find anything worth eating.

Mason motioned toward the double doors.

“My guess is that those doors go deeper into the plant. If Lenny’s here, he’s likely to be that way.”

She nodded and followed him across the room, using her injured hand to hold lightly onto the back of his arm. Bowie stayed close too, ever skittish about being left alone in the dark. They maneuvered around the forklifts until they stood directly in front of the huge double doors. Each door was twelve feet tall and eight feet wide, and they swung open from the center like decorative French doors—the main difference being that these were large enough to pass a M1 Abrams tank with room to spare on either side. The doors were secured with slide bolts that went six inches into the concrete floor. Likewise, the tops of the doors had latches that allowed them to be locked into the heavy metal frame that was mortared into the cinder block wall. Not surprisingly, those difficult-to-access latches had been left unsecured.

Mason placed his ear against the door and listened. The only thing he could hear was Bowie’s nails clicking on the concrete behind him. Letting his rifle hang from the single-point sling, he inched the slide bolt up out of the concrete. When it was finally free, he eased the door open a couple of feet, and all three of them leaned around to peek in.

Surprisingly, the room was already partially lit by a dim green glow emanating from something on the floor. A long conveyor system spanned nearly the entire length of the room, passing through a stainless steel box the size of a school bus. Matching metal carts were positioned at the far end of the conveyor system, and behind them, another set of double doors. As was the case with the receiving room, a smaller office-like door sat open along the right wall.

With a little prodding, Bowie went in first, heading straight for the light. Mason stuffed his flashlight into his pocket and followed, sweeping his rifle across every dark corner of the room. Leila paused briefly at the door, covering them with her pistol.

When Mason got to the light, he stopped and rolled it around with his boot. It was a standard military-issue chemlight. The outer plastic sleeve had been filled with hydrogen peroxide and green dye, and the inner glass vial contained pheynyl oxalate ester. When the unit had been cracked, the chemicals mixed, resulting in chemiluminescence. Chemlights were a modern marvel and a favorite of special ops teams because they were lightweight and didn’t release any heat.

“I’m guessing the soldiers left that,” Leila whispered, coming up from behind him.

“Probably to keep track of what areas they’ve already cleared.”

Mason scanned the room. The top of the conveyor belt was covered with a thick layer of peanuts. Those that had passed through the machine were noticeably darker than the virgin nuts on the left.

“I think it’s a roaster,” she said, following his gaze. “When the cooked nuts come out the other side, they’re dumped into those big carts and wheeled to the next room.”