Walking in the Rain (Book 4): Dark Sky Thunder (25 page)

I remembered how everyone had been opposed to me joining in with the scouting mission. Finally, I just said that if they wanted to keep me out, they would need to get their own set of plans. That stopped the captain, and everyone else in the planning meeting, in their tracks.

“You have the area around the house mapped? And plotted?” Captain Marino asked in disbelief.

“And floorplans for the house. With the most recent, as in before the lights went out, alterations,” I replied. “What he’s done since, I couldn’t say. But I still think it is a bad idea.”

The captain’s plan to go after the congressman instead of assaulting the courthouse, was met with initial resistance from some of the residents of the ranch. Well, from me in particular, but the captain soon educated me in the ways of the world.

“McCorkle has scraped up roughly two companies of National Guard troops from the surrounding communities. He has half that force, nearly a hundred men, camped out around the courthouse complex. He’s got the commander there convinced the sheriff and his deputy are dangerous subversives. The man has these men thinking he is there to stop the federal government from taking over and sending them all to FEMA camps.

“They are just following what they think are legitimate orders, from a non-existent reorganizing Texas government, and they are braced for an attack. We could go in and try to do either a sneak or a straight up assault, but too many civilians and military personnel are likely to get themselves dead.”

Marino brought me around with his inescapable logic. When outnumbered, use your strength where your enemy is weak. If we could take out McCorkle, especially if we could produce evidence of wrongdoing by the congressman, then we could likely bring the National Guard major over to see the truth. Or so the captain’s two men already surveilling the town assured him.

I didn’t want to agree, but the facts were the facts. Even using the freed deputies and scraping up every able-bodied neighbor, we could only manage maybe fifty shooters. That left us short on manpower for an assault, and even I knew that a stealthy approach against an alert foe was a recipe for disaster. So as much as I wanted to go in, guns blazing, I was finally brought around to see reason

Of course, I didn’t bring the plans, or mention their existence, until we got down to just the small group going. And Amy. She wouldn’t leave my side and no one had the heart to make her leave.

I explained that I had an interest in old houses and architecture, which exactly no one believed. Amy would have none of that, however, so she spoke up. “The congressman’s twenty-two-year-old son got away with raping a fourteen-year-old girl back before the lights went out. He used his daddy’s connections to destroy the evidence, and then organized a smear campaign that drove the girl to suicide.”

“You planned on extracting a little revenge there?” Captain Marino asked, and I just shrugged.

“McCorkle was a pretty popular figure for a scumbag piece of dog shit. He was real good at wrapping himself in the flag, though, and the voters around here who didn’t do their homework ate it up. There’s a reason he was a ten-term congressman. Let’s just say I am somehow not surprised the man’s loyalty is only to his own survival. But, the target was the son, Chad.”

That got a head nod from Gaddis, but Mike turned to me with disbelieving eyes. “Would you have done it, before? Killed him in cold blood?”

I shrugged. “I never got a chance to find out. Think of it as an intellectual exercise.”

Master Sergeant Burghoff gave me an icy stare. “Son, this is no intellectual exercise tonight. You can’t go off plan, and you cannot bail out if the shit opens up. I still say there is no way you are going to endanger my men by going.”

I met his cold blue eyes with a stare of my own. “I don’t have your training or skill, Master Sergeant. I’m just a kid. I can’t operate a radio using proper procedures, or perform more than basic first aid if one of your men is injured. But I can get to that house in the dark without being seen by the security. And I know where all the cameras are located. Or at least, where they were before.”

“And can you kill a man if you have to, Luke? Up close and personal, while they are breathing out their last breath in your face?”

That got an unexpected response, as Staff Sergeant Barlow gave a grim laugh. “Are you shittin’ me, Johnny? This here’s the Traveler. That’s what they call him back home. Gut shot and bleeding out, he killed twenty raiders with a pistol and a knife back in McAlester. True story.”

That was not what I expected to hear. Shoot. I was hoping to leave that story behind.

“Seriously?” Captain Marino asked.

I shrugged. “It was only fifteen, and I used my rifle for some of that. And a grenade. But as to your question, Master Sergeant, yes, I can do that. Done it plenty of times before.”

The darkly tanned man seated to my right seemed to be looking for something in my face. I looked back, hiding nothing.

“Like the captain asked, you going to be able to set aside your beef with the congressman if we let you go?”

“Yes. They have my dad and Sheriff Henderson. I’ll do whatever it takes to get them back. That includes letting McCorkle live, if that’s what it takes.”

So, somewhat against their better judgment, the master sergeant and the captain agreed to let me accompany the scouting mission as a guide. I was to follow the master sergeant’s orders to the letter and not deviate from the plan. So I was in for the scout mission.

And now I was slogging through the cattails, wondering why I insisted on going. There was nothing to be gained by my presence, and I could have easily marked off the camera locations for the six men approaching the darkened house.

It wasn’t revenge, I decided, as I slithered over a log and felt a spider web slide across my darkened face. I tried to avoid noise as I moved but of course, nobody could make any progress that way. So I tried to maintain the pace without doing that herd-of-elephants thing my dad warned about.

These men were just so much better than me that I could only try to avoid blowing their approach. I was at least up to practice using the NVGs, and I think I surprised some of the men when I managed to produce my own set. Not that I had a pair, but that they were the same generation as their own.

We approached at an angle, moving across the carefully sculpted forest bordering the sprawling mansion and coming up from behind and to our right, moving past the vacant and ill-kempt tennis courts and around the darkened pool house. I didn’t tell any of these men, but this was as close as I had ever dared creep back before.

Yes, I’d observed the house from several angles, but only once did I approach past the property line and invade the congressman’s sanctuary. And that was when I knew the congressman was out of town. Dad had dropped me off at the campground nearly ten miles away, and I’d hiked the distance the second night. After that, I spent six hours watching by the light of the full moon as I sketched the layout and the various security features I could make out.

Looking through the green-tinted world, nothing appeared out of place but the house was clearly still inhabited. Just as Captain Marino’s two scouts had indicated. I didn’t know at the time I was making my pitch that they had already crawled all over every inch of the grounds and gave a succinct and detailed report to Captain Marino and the master sergeant.

So we could tell someone was home from the lights and from the smell. The air stank of diesel exhaust and rotting food, probably the trash, and every light in the house seemed to be lit up. This was also reported.

As the men melted into the night in a noose formation around the back and sides of the looming, two-story massive structure, I followed the lead of the Master Sergeant and sank down into the soft, damp earth. We’d had rain earlier that day, and more clouds loomed as we anticipated an additional downpour.

So, we waited for the next four hours as evening gave way to early morning, and none of the men so much as rustled that I could see. I found myself drifting off after a while, and slept in short catnaps that rarely lasted more than twenty minutes. I wasn’t on watch, so nobody gave me any grief about it. I think the soldiers were trading off for some shuteye as well, but nobody said anything to me.

When Burghoff lightly tapped my boot, I awoke feeling…well, I still felt tired. The big sergeant’s face was inches from my own and I could just barely hear his words from that close range.

“Cap called it a go,” he said softly. But without whispering. I noticed none of the words had a ‘s’ sound, and I wondered if that article I’d read about ‘s’ sounds being more easily heard at night had some merit. Maybe it did after all.

The first step, the scout mission, was completed then. I didn’t know how many men guarded the mansion, but I didn’t need that information at the moment. I was dead weight for the soldiers, and I wondered if Burghoff would simply tell me to wait outside. Obviously, they didn’t need my help.

But I saw the master sergeant’s hand beckon in the dark, and I turned on the night vision and gave it enough time to cycle up. The world was still green, but the brighter light sources from just a few hours ago now appeared muted, or dead. The house was bathed in a curtain of darkness now, but one the goggles made penetrable.

By the time Burghoff and I reached the opened back door, two dark shapes lay sprawled under a window. Shoot. I never heard a bullet or any sound out of the ordinary. These guys weren’t just good at their jobs, they were uncanny. I guess multiple tours in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, or Syria and Yemen, made for quite a bit of practice.

Burghoff led me a roundabout route and then ushered me inside. This was a part of the back porch, but an access point that allowed for staff to come and go without intruding on the family’s enjoyment of the rear deck area. Easy peasy, and I was glad my electronic theft of the online building plans might have helped in at least formulating their approach.

The men flowed through the house like ink across a page, and I hardly noted the sound of their suppressed pistols as they eliminated the standing sentries. Whatever the hell they were using, sure worked better than anything we had at the ranch. Maybe they would show Mike how to make those suppressors. Yeah, that was going to happen.

I didn’t see what happened, but suddenly a gunshot, unsuppressed, sounded like a bomb going off across the long expanse of the living room. I hit the floor and drew my pistol, scanning for targets. In just a few seconds, gunshots began to erupt in the blackness like lightning flashing on a midnight sky, and then the roar of dark sky thunder rolled across the green-tinted gloom.

All of the SF soldiers wore subdued cats eyes on the backs of their helmets, something faint enough that they were only visible with night vision, as a way to avoid blue on blue shootings in the dark. That was great, but I saw several forms lacking the glow and I couldn’t tell from my angle if that meant they were hostiles or face on to me. Remembering Burghoff’s admonishments, I stayed low and tried to avoid becoming a target. I heard the dull roar of the suppressed HK417s of the SF soldiers as they transitioned from quiet to loud and cut a swath through the guards.

“Crash” came the call on the radio and I only remembered the meaning of that code word at the last second. I ripped the night vision from my eyes and curled into a ball as the flash bang exploded in the middle of the room.

With my back to the blast, I was able to recover quickly and spin, suddenly seeing half a dozen strangers crouched down and trying to reset their overloaded night vision optics. The latest generation didn’t burn out, and shut down for a moment to prevent this from happening. In the flickering glow of the still burning incendiary, I began firing.

I emptied the magazine in my unsuppressed XD, then rolled and crawled across the carpet to huddle behind a massive stone fireplace. I reloaded, replaced my night vision goggles, and prayed I’d done the correct thing by firing. I was certain those weren’t our guys, but I’d also not gotten the master sergeant’s go-ahead to fire either.

I heard a few whiffs, maybe the suppressed pistols, then the men on the net began checking in, their voices sounding more like golf announcers than men just seconds past a pitched gun battle at insanely close range. Finally, I heard a voice ask, “Luke?”

“Here,” I replied, hoping my voice didn’t squeak.

“Good shooting. Now get the fuck over here,” Master Sergeant Burghoff ordered, and he still sounded like this was a practice round at the shooting range.

“Crawling, now,” I said into the mike and slid over to where I’d heard the senior NCO’s voice. He was crouched over another soldier who seemed to be fighting the urge to make a sound. I could see his shoulders hunch, then relax.

“Bobo took one in the leg,” Burghoff said. “You said you got a little first aid training?”

“I do,” I replied, and took the proffered aid kit from the bleeding man’s hands.

“Then help him. And watch our backs down here. We’re headed upstairs.”

“I can go, Burg,” Bobo said, and even I could see that might be a bad idea. The bullet tore out a chunk of flesh on the outside of the thigh, about six inches above the right knee. The bleeding was steady but not gushing, so no artery, but the man didn’t need to be running around on that kind of wound. Unless he needed to, that was. I had a feeling these guys had a lot of experience in having to do just that kind of thing.

“Just be cool. Luke here’s going to patch that up. You know we gotta watch the stairs, anyway. Might as well be you, sitting on your ass.”

Bobo was the nickname for one the younger soldiers, a staff sergeant, I thought. Other than the captain and the master sergeant, the other men were introduced by rank and a nickname. Unless Marino and Burghoff were nicknames too, and we just didn’t get the reference. That could happen, I realized. Not that it mattered now.

As the master sergeant hustled off to rejoin the rest of their group, I got Bobo to continue applying pressure while I tore the wrapper and laid out the bandage. I recognized this as one of the good ones, with all the adhesive in the right spots and a clotting agent in the woven, absorbent material at the center.