Sic Semper Tyrannis (25 page)

In the distance he could hear a low rumbling sound.  The Chinese were getting close.  He glanced again at the locals gathered on the steps.  They looked completely worn-out and wore dirty, soot-covered clothes. 

Rob gritted his teeth and charged, his rifle held high, screaming for them to get down.  Four of them dropped to their knees and went face first on the ground.  Two others turned and ran, heading in opposite directions.  The last man standing was Roger Hallwood.  He stood there before Rob, arms folded across his chest.

"Why don't you just give up now and save yourself the trouble?" Hallwood asked politely.  Rob took the marble steps two at a time until he was right in the man's face and the shit-eating smile vanished.

Without breaking stride Rob swung the butt of his rifle up and caught the traitor square in the face.  Rob stepped over Hallwood’s crumpled body with no small amount of satisfaction and kicked in the front door to the courthouse.  He stood there in the doorway and waited as his Regulators began to stream in from across the street. 

The rumble of Chinese vehicles grew in intensity with every second.  The dust cloud was just on the other side of the closest houses now, he figured they would be showing up in front of the courthouse any second now.

"You bastard!" Hallwood sputtered through a bloody nose.  He struggled to get to his knees.  "What the hell is wrong with you?  If you would’ve just left when I asked you to—"

Rob brought his rifle up and took aim at the man's forehead.  Hallwood went pale.  "Shut your mouth, traitor."

The first of the Regulators rushed past Rob and moved inside the courthouse to secure the building.  He could hear shouts from inside as they went room to room clearing the building.  Rob turned his attention back to Hallwood, who now had his hands up and was standing at the top of the marble steps.

"You realize the Chinese are going kill you, right?"

Hallwood turned an angry glare on Rob.  "They'll do no such thing!  We made a deal!  They will leave this town in peace when I hand you over."

"They’ll leave this town in
pieces
, you dumb shit!"  Rob said, fury making his voice hoarse.  "You have no idea what you're doing!  I saw what they did down in Nogales—I saw their brand of treating with the natives!  They rolled through town and destroyed everything in their path!  They're killing everybody, why don't you see that?"

"They're not here to kill anyone!  Their commander explained to me—"

Rob turned away as Ed rushed up the courthouse steps carrying a handful of rifles and bags of ammunition slung over his shoulder.  "I'm the last one—what do we do now?  They’re right on my ass."

"Get inside—see if you can find some kind of fallout shelter or basement or something like that."

"You got it."   Ed disappeared inside the darkened courthouse.

The roar of the Chinese vehicles had risen to a constant thunder.  Rob caught a glimpse of one of the squat green APCs as it passed between two burned-out houses down the street.  They were only seconds away from converging from two different directions on the courthouse.   His men would be trapped.  It would only be a matter of seconds, he figured, before they blew the whole building straight to hell. 

Rob glared at Hallwood. The man standing before him had caused all of this.  His stupidity would cause the end of so many lives.  So many American lives.  The Quisling. 

With a calmness that Rob did not fully expect, he shouldered his AR, strode forward a few steps and pulled free his hunting knife.  He placed the knife right on the tip of the Hallwood's Adam's apple, and spoke: "Get your ass inside."

The man's face—if possible—went even paler.  "What…what do you mean?  What do you want with
me?
"

Rob grabbed the man by the back of the neck, keeping the knife blade pressed tight against his throat.  In this position, there was nothing for the traitor to do but follow Rob's lead.  "You're the one who set this up, so you’ve had personal contact with these Chinese bastards.  We both know they're here to kill me and my men.  So if I'm going out, I'm taking your ass with me."  Rob turned and forcibly marched the quisling straight through the open courthouse door.

Inside the darkened building, he could see a shadow at the far end of the wide hallway.  "Rob!  This way, man.  We found the basement!"

Shouts from outside propelled Rob and his captive down the hallway at a jog.  As Rob turned the corner at the far end of the dark hallway, he glanced towards the bright light of the open front doors.  He could see silhouettes   moving around out there.  The Chinese had arrived.  A heavy door slammed.   The sound of gears slowing down accompanied the screech of air brakes, rolled down the corridor towards Rob.  In a few moments, the building would be crawling with Chinese soldiers.

"
Rob!  What the hell?
" cried Lance's voice over the radio.  "
You still with me, man?  You got what looks like at least two platoons of Chinese on the North and East side of the courthouse.  Hope you guys found a good hiding place."

Rob turned the corner and found the stairwell down to the basement of the courthouse.  He could see the nuclear fallout shelter sign, an old rusted metal plaque that had been embedded into the wall 60 years before.  He removed the knife from the Hallwood's neck and gave him a hard push which sent the man tumbling down the stairs with shouting in pain.  One of the Regulators laughed and caught him at the bottom.  At a nod from Rob, he threw Hallwood into the darkness beyond to the satisfying sound of cursing. 

Rob keyed his radio from the top of the stairs and said: "We’re all right.  What's it look like outside?"

"
You got a shit-ton of ground troops circling around the building.  They got the place surrounded now.
"  Rob could hear the resignation his friend’s voice.

Rob closed his eyes and sighed.  He leaned against the doorway to the stairwell and looked up at the darkened ceiling before keying the mic on the radio.  "Well, we had a good run, didn't we?"  He leaned around the corner and peered carefully down the hallway.   Lance’s reply was too static-filled to understand.

Hollow footsteps echoed in the empty building.  More than one Chinese soldier had entered already.  They were checking rooms, working their way toward the far end of the hallway of the building.  Ed Franks jogged up the steps behind Rob.  He knelt next to the doorway, and started fiddling with something in his hands.  Rob squatted next to him.

"What's that?"

In the darkness, he couldn't see the expression on Ed's face, but he could hear the smile in the man's voice.  “Oh, just a little surprise for our visitors.  Found some of this shit in one of the ammo dumps that we took.  Never really had a use for it until now."

Rob stepped back as Ed set up a green box attached to the door frame on the other side of the stairwell.  He strung a wire between both and then attached a smaller box to the wall with a soft metallic click.  He turned and looked up at Rob.  "Okay, she's all set.  First man who touches this wire is gotta be blown into Kingdom Come.  With any luck, it'll bring the ceiling down on top of anybody who's right behind them.  Maybe it'll seal us in?"

Rob put his hand on Ed's shoulder.  "It's a good idea.  Let's see how many of these sons of bitches we can take with us, right?"

"Fuck’n A, Bubba." 

"One, you got a group of guys standing around the front of the courthouse now.  Looks like officers." 
The clear transmission echoed down the hallway and startled Rob.

As he descended the stairwell into the darkness of the basement, Rob keyed his radio "Copy that Overwatch, we got a few of them inside the building with us.  Ed just rigged up a little surprise for ‘em."

Rob took a position behind an overturned desk with a clear line of sight toward the end of the stairwell.  "Overwatch, make sure you get word back to camp—rustle everybody up and get them the hell out of here.  You're in charge now."

Rob didn't realize how those words would affect him.  The mantle of leadership was suddenly lifted off his shoulders.  All the Regulators he had been worrying about, all the families—everything—it was all Lance's problem now.  He figured he only had a few more minutes left of life anyway.  No sense in worrying about things he couldn't change. 

The only thing Rob Gunn had to focus on now was killing as many Chinese as possible soldiers before he died.  It was a rather liberating thought.  His entire life had been boiled down to one purpose. 

In the darkness of the courthouse basement, he could not see any faces.  All he could see were dark shapes against a darker background.  He could only hear the movement of his men: the rustle of supplies, the shifting of heavy furniture and boxes as they tried to create some cover for themselves.  He could hear weapons primed, magazines slammed home, and ammo checks called out.

The last stand of the Regulators.

Rob smiled in the darkness.  He liked the sound of that.  For a brief moment, he wondered if General Custer was up there somewhere looking down on him—or perhaps looking up, he thought with a chuckle—urging him on to glory.

"Men," he said quietly.  He waited for the rustling noises to dissipate.  He wasn't the best at making speeches, but he figured this was about the time for making one.  When overpowering silence had enveloped him like a death shroud, he started to speak again. 

"You all know me, you know I don't give long speeches.  But I want to say…” he cleared his throat. “I want to tell you that it has been an honor protecting our country with you.  And whatever happens in the next few minutes, I want you to forget about all of your worries.  Everything you ever worried about in your entire life, all the stress, all the anxiety.  Just let it go.  The only thing that matters to each and every one of us in the next few minutes is how we are going to leave this world.”  He paused to collect his thoughts. 

“I suppose I don’t need to tell you there’s no hope of escape.  Building’s surrounded—you all heard Lance.  The only thing we can do now is stand like men, defend our homes and our land to the very last breath, and take a few of them with us."  Rob’s words were met with grim silence.  “All right then.”

Rob settled into his position and rested his rifle across the top of a desk.  He aimed at the light patch of darkness in front of him that denoted the stairwell.

"Think this is how those boys felt at the Alamo?" somebody said quietly in the darkness.

A few chuckles rippled around him and more than one man grunted his agreement.

"Yeah," Rob said.  "I reckon so.  There's no small comfort in that, boys.  If Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie can go out in a blaze of glory, then so can the Regulators."

The men cheered as one.

A sharp voice from the top of the stairwell got everyone's attention.  The basement became deathly quiet.  The few regulators who had laser sights switched them on and red dots appeared on the wall at the base of the stairs.

Rob could barely make out some indistinct noises from the top of the stairwell.  It almost sounded like two people discussing something.  They weren’t speaking English—that much was clear. 

Rob adjusted his grip on his sweat-slick rifle.  More than ever, he wished that he had his old lever-action with him.   A sadness enveloped him suddenly with the thought that he’d never hold that old friend in his hands again.   He shifted the safety off and smiled at the metallic click that let him know his AR-15 was now live. 

"Good hunting, Regulators!" he called out.

Before anyone could respond, there was a terrible explosion at the top of the stairs and a blinding white flash poured down into the basement.  For a split second, the light was enough to illuminate the faces of the men around him.  The world quickly collapsed into blackness, lit only by the afterimage of the explosion in Rob’s eyes.  The only sound he could hear was the ringing in his ears.  He shook his head and began to hear screams.  He squinted in the darkness and spotted movement—then realized that it was just smoke rolling down the stairs.

He smiled.  The Chinese had discovered Ed’s welcome mat.

LANCE PEERED AROUND ONE of the large pine trees that he’d sat next to all afternoon and used his binoculars to scan the scene in the valley below.  He was not in a good mood.  Lance hadn't been able to raise Rob on the radio since he’d announced that they were heading down to the basement of the courthouse.   Now, the Chinese swarmed over the building.  There were men on the roof, the sides, and men behind it—they were everywhere.  Unless there was some sort of secret tunnel under the building, Lance knew that Rob and the Regulators trapped inside were doomed.  There would be no getting out of this one.

The last stand of the Regulators.

Lance ground his teeth and punched at the soft loamy dirt in frustration.  It had all happened so quickly.  It had to have been Hallwood.  Rob had mentioned he’d been nervous about the whole thing from the beginning—so did Lance for that matter, but he didn’t protest the decision. 
Damn it all.
I should have stopped the mission…I should have spoken up…

Lance leaned back against the tree and stared at the sky, trying to think what to do next.  No matter which way he went, he always ended up at square one.  There was no easy way out of the mess Rob had walked into.