Terry was up to his knees in river water, peeking around the end of the tall fence. To his thinking, this was an obvious approach, and he was surprised that no one was guarding the location. Nonetheless, he was alone, unless he counted the slow procession of bad guys loading salvage onto the barge, 400 feet down the river bank. He had hoped to use the sharp drop of the muddy bank to stroll his way to the boats, but he had a clear line of sight to the enemy, which meant they only had to glance in his direction to see him coming. Instead, it looked like he would crawl through the heavy shrubbery that had run wild just over the crest of the bank. He waited for a break in the line of enemy workers, slipped around the fence and scrambled up the slippery mud and into the natural cover.
John and Bill parted ways, John further north, and Bill to the south. In both cases, they had proceeded as far as they would get with the easy cover of salvage piles. John was heading further out to make the long open crossing to the main salvage building, at a distance where, if he was seen, he might miss being identified as an infiltrator. The pressure was on for him. He had to disable as many vehicles as possible before Jeffry fired the opening shot. When he reached a likely crossing, almost halfway between the building and the front gate, John tucked his rifle against his left side, and simply walked across the open gravel, thinking casual and invisible thoughts. As soon as he passed out of sight of the docks, he angled in towards the building and the line of vehicles, waiting for his loving touch.
Bill’s plan was simpler, and just as dangerous. He set up in the faint shadows of a haphazard pile of lumber and torn plywood. He intended to wait until Jeffry opened fire before he moved. When the assholes were running around looking for the shooter, he would try to take advantage of the chaos to make an open approach to the building. If he was really lucky, some jerk would run out of the building wearing the fanciest white robe, and Bill would shoot him in the kneecaps, allowing ample time for killing his friends before the interrogation. The problem, Bill well knew, was that nothing was ever that easy. The longer he sat, the more foolish he felt. He should have gone in with John, helped him to break the cars, and worked into the building as a team. Oh well... Either they could pull it off or they would all likely die in a crazy daylight attack.
Jeffry was in great shape, even by post-Breakdown standards. He probably could have given any Marine a run for his money, but this... Running through the abandoned streets of Nashville with a heavy rifle and a crapload of spare magazines was something he wouldn’t wish on anyone. He made the left turn past the bridge and ignored his burning lungs and muscles as he trotted along the railroad tracks on the south shore of the Cumberland. Thanks to years of uncontrolled growth on the river, he was completely unseen from the salvage yard, provided no one had spotted him crossing the open bridge. Nothing to do about that, so he kept running.
From his high post on the storage tank, Rob was the first one to see an actual guard. The man was working slowly around in circles near the front gate. He felt a little surge of adrenalin, knowing that Seth and Nick were on their way to the guard’s position. Fortunately, Seth had spotted the lone guard before they turned the corner on the northern fence. Seth, normally not the smartest man in the group, but big and strong enough to make up for it, immediately formed a plan. He murmured to Nick to wait at the corner, leaned his rifle against the fence, and shed his ammunition packed vest. When the guard was looking the other way, Seth walked out into the middle of the street in plain sight. He strolled casually down the street, trying to look as if he had no idea where he was going. The lazy guard spotted Seth when he was within a hundred feet of the gate. Seth was wearing a sidearm and a suspiciously long knife, but that was just typical outerwear. The guard reacted, but not aggressively, just as big Seth had expected.
Seth had a skill for looking non-threatening, which was probably just a side effect of growing up as the biggest kid, and he used it to walk right up to the guard and engage in conversation. Nick knew better. Any second, Seth would transform from a big, dumb teddy bear into something more akin to a lion striking a gazelle. Nick was prepared to back his buddy up, but doubted it would be necessary. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Rob was ready to assist as well. Seth was gesturing like a tourist lost in a foreign city, pointing in different directions and shrugging in apparent confusion. He was also idly drawing the guard away from the gate and into easier firing position for his hidden team. From Nick’s position, Seth and the guard were practically best friends when the big man decided he had pulled the guard out of sight of the men in the salvage yard. He appeared to tell the man a joke. As the guard laughed, Seth leaned over to give a friendly shoulder slap, and punched his huge knife up through the guard’s chest hard enough to lift the man off the ground. The knife was back in its sheath before the dead guard flopped on the pavement.
Nick admitted to a vicarious thrill from that moment. He turned to Rob’s position and offered an exaggerated shrug. Seth dragged the guard’s body into the ditch beside the gate, and with little visible effort, stuffed it into the drain pipe below the entrance. He stood up, rubbed his hands together in a satisfied way, and trotted back over to Nick. “Hey, Nick. There’s a good spot for your post over there, man,” Seth said, indicating with a thumb over his shoulder.
“You take it, bug guy. I think this gate is yours now. I’ll take the roof on the far side.” Nick gave his friend a chuck on the shoulder and waited while Seth collected his gear.
Terry had been crawling forever. He was tired; so tired in fact, that he was having a persistent daydream about simply standing up and shooting everyone in sight, but he had made it this far, and although he tried to stay alert, he was rapidly closing his awareness down to the next bush, the next move, the next freaking inch of ground.
John took the riskiest truck first. It was closest to the corner of the building. He prided himself on his creativity, and although he was a man on a mission, he intended to use a different method to disable each one of the vehicles. The assholes will never figure it out, was his rationale. The first truck got a sharp knife into the wiring under the dashboard. The only hard part was opening the door without making too much noise. It was a good method, because the old slashed tire trick would be visible to half the yard. He saved that for the second truck, but instead of slashing the tires, he took a valve tool from his pocket and simply unscrewed the tire valves on the right side until the air leaked out in a low hiss. When the tires were flat, he removed the valves completely, and stuffed them in a vest pocket. The third truck was a big, heavy duty model. He slid underneath and used a set of wrenches to disconnect the back end of the drive shaft, which he lowered gently to the ground.
He was about to crawl out from under the truck when the large garage door began to open. John used the two seconds he had available to wedge himself behind the big double tires and to draw his automatic, aiming it in the general direction of the door. The door made a lot of noise, which covered his movements, but also made him wince nervously, as he expected a crowd to form around it. Instead, a single pair of oily boots and stained blue cuffs walked out the door. John peered into the dark space inside and saw another man working on a pickup truck with the aid of a shop light hanging from the open hood. He understood that these two were stripping the state vehicles down to parts, which were easier to transport than entire vehicles.
The first man started the truck and rapidly maneuvered it into the empty bay inside. John was stuck. With the big door open, he would need time when the men were buried in their work to move past the door, much less get inside. He gave up on his artistic aspirations and resorted to a quick job of tire slashing on the remaining vehicles. He hated it, since good tires were not so easy to find, but his needs were pressing.
With the road escape handled, John waited for another opportunity to sneak into the garage. He worked several angles outside to make sure that there were only two men in sight, and made his move. He slid around the left side of the door opening, and made his way quickly into the dark corner, behind an old tire balancing machine. He took a few slow, deep breaths and leaned out to see his quarry. The original man was almost directly in front of the door, some thirty feet away. The other man was closer, but at the moment, was on the far side of his partially disassembled SUV. John waited. He needed man number one to be facing the far wall, and man number two to face in the same direction, but on John’s side of the SUV. Finally, after John had enough time to sneak up, under cover of a sloppy collection of tool cabinets and car parts, the men obliged him. He wasted no time. The first man, ironically named man number two in John’s head, lost his life to a knife across the throat, the noise muffled by John’s hand covering the nose and mouth, and his sleeve on the gaping wound.
Danger caught the senses of the second man (man number one) and he turned. His partner had disappeared from view, and he stepped over to check when John’s hands shot out from under the SUV, grabbed a pair of ankles, and yanked so hard that the man died from the back of his head hitting the concrete floor with a sickening crunch. Just to be sure, John followed with a quick stab to the man’s groin, severing the femoral artery. The blood didn’t spray. It was over.
Jeffry was still recovering from the run, but for a sharpshooter, he was in heaven. He had found an old concrete mixing yard, with convenient fifty foot tall towers. He settled in on top of one that gave him a fantastic view of the docks across the river. Between the tall wheelhouses on the tugboats, he had a complete view of the river face of the yard where the enemy was loading the barge. The only drawback was that every shot would fly right over the heads of the imprisoned state police. He mentally shrugged. The range was about half of his effective maximum. If he couldn’t hit from here, Bill would have sent someone else.
Jeffry took his time preparing. He unfolded the bipod legs and checked the conditions before he dialed in his sights. His heart rate was still too high to be really accurate. He breathed deeply, willing his body into the calm state he needed. He used the minutes to survey the scene. He settled into firing position, and the distant salvage yard leapt close as his eye aligned with the scope. After years of practice with this exact procedure, his body relaxed as soon as he fixed his eye on the first target. He felt the weight of what he was doing, the responsibility of making the call, setting off an entire chain of events, in which men would die. He only hoped it would be the bad men.
He took a breath, eased it out, settled the cross hairs on his chosen target, an angry looking man standing by the door of the building, holding a metal cup in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Jeffry pegged him as the man supervising the loading procedure, head asshole in charge, and that was good enough. His entire mind on the target, he squeezed the trigger, felt the familiar kick of the heavy rifle, and became a systematic killing machine.
Chapter 5 - 3
Bill almost missed the opening shot. His mind was trying to work its way through the problem of these aggressive invaders back to their God-forsaken home, when the sniper round passed through the man by the door and punched into the metal shell of the building behind him. Bill snapped his attention back to the moment, and watched in amazement as Jeffry’s shots came in at two second-intervals, creating a brutal stew of bodies across the dock. The deep rolling thunder of the rifle rolled across the water in pursuit of the high velocity projectiles. At the rate he was going, Bill could sit here and watch Jeffry do all the work.
The enemy froze in confusion for long seconds of shock, as it seemed to them as if the hand of God was smiting them at will. Then one of the sharper ones located the approximate source of the shots and ran for cover, starting a stampede. As panic took over, they began to run in any direction that seemed better than where they were. The higher, sharper crack of new rifle fire joined the booming symphony, as Bill’s men joined the fight.
Terry jumped up and ran for the docks. He actually passed one of the enemy running in the opposite direction just as Rob’s bullet dropped the man at his feet. Terry hopped over and kept running. By the time he reached the dock, he was the only one there. He slipped through blood and tissue, scrambling to reach the gangplank. He slid on the smooth metal walkway of the barge, and turned right, heading for the closest tugboat. He leaped over the gunwale and charged across the deck to the ladder. He took the steps two at time, threw open the wheelhouse door, and found a flannel clad man huddled on the floor, under the console. Without thinking, he kicked the man under the jaw, which was bad because he was aiming higher, and good because this was more effective. The man’s mouth slammed shut with tooth-shattering force, dazing him long enough for Terry to drag him out the door, and shove him over the rail. The man bounced once off the gunwale before dropping into the green water.
Terry stepped back inside and studied the console. He pushed the starter button, and nothing happened. Then he saw the key in the ignition. He turned it to the right and pushed the starter again. He heard the engine cranking, but it didn’t start. Remembering Shaun, he pushed a lever forward and tried again. This time the engine caught, revved up high, vibrating the entire boat, before Terry pulled the lever back. He pushed it forward again with his thumb on a button he hadn’t realized was there, and the boat kicked into gear. He felt a sudden shift under his feet, and almost fell when the boat ran out of slack in the lines holding it to the dock. He groaned and mentally kicked himself for forgetting about the lines, and left the wheelhouse to climb back onto the dock to cut the lines.
Terry pulled his new knife and started sawing on the first two-inch line when a second surge of bad guys started to pour out of the building. About a second later, another group streamed up from the cabin cruiser tied to the far end of the barge. Both groups were shooting in his direction. Terry ran ten steps to the nearest end of the dock and dove headfirst into the river. He immediately climbed out of the water to get back in the fight. As he clambered over the bank, he saw that Bill was making a mess of the group from the building. They were focused on Terry, recognizing the threat of losing the boats, and failed to notice Bill until he had raked them over with fire from his assault rifle. Meanwhile, Jeffry had shifted his fire to the group from the cruiser, and while they were dropping at a steady rate, there were still plenty left to kill Terry.