A Thousand Years of Darkness: a Thriller (21 page)

“One of us is going to die,” he promised in a low growl.

Hand still on the butt of his gun, the Green Shirt’s gaze reflexively shifted toward his bleeding buddy on the floor. This guy was holding his head with both hands, blood spurting between his fingers while he tried to push himself into the wall to escape from the mad Indian standing above him.

“The surest way to get your heads blown off is to have them up your asses,” Nail warned.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

Ozark Mountains

Green Shirt training seemed to have been suspended as the heat index pegged around one-ten, all activity moving indoors out of the sun. Nail was armed and dangerous with the pair of Glock 19s he relieved from the two guards, who, along with the kid Smitty, were now tied hand and foot in his former cell with plastic tie-strip handcuffs he located in a closet in the guard room. The only sounds they made were muffled complaints through their gags.

The shaved-head guy was still bleeding pretty good from where Nail tapped him on the head, but he wasn’t seriously injured. Nail had stripped the other of his black jeans, bill cap, green T-shirt and holster and donned them himself. His new apparel fit a bit snug, but it would have to do. The shaved-head man was more Nail’s size, but he had blood all over his uniform.

Disguised in the AmeriCorps outfit, Nail hoped to locate and reach Sharon before he was discovered. He would deal with Forbis and Henshaw later—pass jail, skip trial and go directly to the morgue. But Sharon came first.

The groomed parade field that lay between the stockade and the long green barracks was about one football field across. The only way to reach the CQ where Sharon was apparently being held was to cross it in the open.

Nail jerked the bill of his purloined uniform cap lower over his eyes to hide his features. He was about to turn from the office windows to head for the door when he spotted two Green Shirts exiting the green barracks. The larger of the two resembled Forbis until he removed his cap to swipe sweat from his brow, revealing a full thatch of short black hair.

They headed toward the stockade. At this rate, Nail was going to have his old cell filled with Green Shirts. Somebody was bound to get suspicious. Nail had learned in the army that the best battle plan rarely survived first contact with the enemy.

The kid Smitty gave him an idea. He hurried to the locked cell, untied the kid’s feet and escorted him to the guard room. The two Green Shirts were halfway across the parade field and still coming.

“Do exactly what I say and you and those two assholes coming out here will live,” Nail informed him. “I’ll strangle you if you make an attempt to warn them.”

The cop untied his hands and removed his gag.

“Sit at the desk,” he instructed. “Don’t get up for any reason. Get rid of those guys if they come in here. If anything goes wrong—”

Nail let him take a long believer’s look down the barrel of his Glock.

“P-Please. I’m supposed to get married next month—”

“Congratulations. We don’t want to make her a widow before she’s a bride. Act natural. I’ll be in the hall behind the door watching every move you make.”

“Y-Y-yessir,” Smitty stammered.

Nail placed both hands on Smitty’s shoulders and leaned over face to face with him.

“Calm down. Your life depends on it.”

He was taking a big chance on the kid, but it seemed his best option. He limped to the hallway door and closed it behind him, leaving the door cracked enough that he could see most of the room. Smitty flinched but remained seated when the two Green Shirts sauntered in. Neither was armed. Nail figured they had been sent over from CQ to check on the guards.

“Damn, Smitty, you’re sweating like a hog,” the black-haired one observed. The other was a redhead. “Turn up the air.”

“It’s set on eighty,” Smitty managed with some degree of normality. “That’s regulation.”

“Dude, you look like shit,” the redhead noted.

“Uh...”

“What’s the matter with you, man?” the dark one demanded.

“I’m...uh...not feeling well. I’ve been vomiting all day.”

“Why don’t you rack out? We don’t need three guards to watch one asshole. Speaking of assholes, how’s he doing?”

“He’s in his cell.”

“CQ says make sure not to open his door for nothing. He’s a cop and they say he’s a mean son of a bitch. Where’s Crabb and Pee Wee?”

“They, uh, went to the mess hall to get some iced tea,” Smitty lied with growing confidence. “They’ll be right back.”

“There’ll be a fecal storm if the Commander finds out they left their post without reporting in.”

“You won’t tell?” Smitty whined. “They’ll be back real quick.”

The Green Shirt visitors laughed. “Dude, you are such a pussy.”

“I’m not a pussy.”

“Then you’re the next thing to it.”

“H-How long we gonna be on watch?”

The dark-haired Green Shirt shrugged. “I guess until they tell us. We’re outa here, pussy. Tell Crabb and Pee Wee they’re pushing it, taking off like they did.”

They laughed and shut the door behind them as they left. Smitty slumped at the desk, looking spent. Nail came out and checked on the departing Green Shirts through one of the windows. They were going back the same way they came. The somnolent hum of a hot summer’s day remained otherwise undisturbed.

“I-I did what you said,” Smitty hazarded.

“You did good, kid.”

“W-What are you going to do with me?”

“That depends. Which one of those buildings is the CQ?”

“It’s the lower white one behind the green barracks.”

Nail thought about it. Somebody was bound to notice one man out in the heat and question his purpose. He wondered if he could hole up until evening when activity started to pick up again. He sank onto the spare chair at the desk where he could watch Smitty and at the same time keep his eyes peeled out the window. Smitty shifted nervously.

“Is it true you was a police officer?” he asked to break the stale air. He sounded calmer.

“What else have you heard?”

“They said you was with the terrorists who hung the federal worker in the cemetery.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I—” Smitty hung his head.

“How did you get involved with this bunch? You don’t seem the type.”

“They’re like my family—”

“That’s not what I asked.”

Smitty looked up inquiringly, as though to gauge the cop’s interest. Nail encouraged him with a flick of his hand.

“I guess it was Michael Moore,” he said hesitatingly. “You know, the fat guy who makes movies? I seen him, like, on
Oprah
or something. He was saying like how young people have to face the truth. We ain’t never going to be rich. The system is rigged in favor of the few fat cats and we aren’t one of them. Not now. Not never. I couldn’t find a job, so when I heard about AmeriCorps, I went and signed up.”

He suffered himself a tremulous half-grin, as in apology.

“Were you at the old schoolhouse last night with the others?” Nail asked.

Smitty actually blushed. He was probably no older than eighteen or nineteen, one of the little hill boys like Nail had been growing up. Sharon said kids like him were being indoctrinated in “social justice” and “liberation theology” through the public education system.

“There used to be shows on TV like
Father Knows Best, My Three Sons,
and
Leave It To Beaver
in which fathers were strong role models,” Sharon had pointed out during their stay at the Safe House. “Today, father figures on the boob tube are a bunch of dolts and fools. It’s part of the Progressive culture to break down the family. Families fall apart, kids leave home, creating a vacuum for government to fill. If I had children of my own, they’d never step one foot into a public school.”

She was opening Nail’s eyes bit by bit.

Movement outside caught his attention. He stood to get a better look through the window as a party of four Green Shirts appeared from around one end of the Green Barracks and headed west toward the rise of forested hills nearby. Sharon’s red T-shirt stood out in the field of green.

Smitty’s face bleached to corpse pale. “Mr. Nail,” he said in a choked voice, “they’ll be coming for you next.”

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Ozark Mountains

Smitty acknowledged what he said nearly everyone in camp already knew—that Sharon and Nail were going to be made
disappeared
in order to avert any kind of controversy over their deaths. The tattoo on Forbis’ arm was visible even from a distance.

“I don’t want nothing to do with this,” Smitty said.

“Prove it.”

Changing plans, Nail hurriedly stripped off the guard’s uniform he had just put on and returned to his jeans, T-shirt and ball cap. He gave the guard’s holster and one of the Glocks, unloaded, to Smitty. The other pistol, loaded, he stuck in his belt underneath his T-shirt in the small of his back where it would be easy to reach with his hands loosely tie-stripped behind to give the appearance that he was cuffed.

“If anybody stops us,” he told Smitty, “you’re escorting me to the woods.”

A back door down the hallway led out onto the parade ground. In Nail’s former cell, the shaved-headed man, Crabb, was still issuing complaints through his bloody gag. Pee Wee huddled in a corner with his legs pulled up to his chin.

Nail exited and walked at a fast pace along the edge of a single line of widely-spaced cedars, Smitty a step behind in his role as appointed guard. Sharon and her escort were ahead of them by a considerable lead and were approaching a wooded hill.

The sun bore down. Nail’s shirt soaked up perspiration from heat and anxiety. Sharon and the Green Shirts with her entered the trees out of sight. Nail increased his stride without breaking into a jog that might arouse the suspicion of observers. His limp was nothing more than an inconvenience.

Smitty glanced back and uttered a warning. “Oh, God! They’ve found Crabb and Pee Wee tied up. They’re heading this way.”

Nail looked and saw five or six Green Shirts racing after them. It wouldn’t take them long to catch up. Nail thought he recognized the figure leading the pack. Henshaw, the other gunman from the helicopter. Nail ripped his hands free.

“Smitty, you’re on your own,” he snapped as he broke into a full run toward where he last saw Sharon entering the woods. He experienced a flash of déjà vu—of his desperate and ultimately unsuccessful attempt to reach Jamie in time. He mustn’t fail again.

Could fate be so cruel?

To his astonishment, Smitty remained at his heels when he reached the forest shadows.

“They’ll think I helped you escape,” he panted. “They’ll kill me too. There’s a clearing straight ahead.”

Nail ducked and dodged through the trees and, sure enough, quickly approached the edge of a clearing. Sunshine washed it in bright summer radiance. Across its center burbled a stream from out of the mountains. Nail heard the howling of their pursuers behind him.

Ahead, Sharon knelt on her knees by the brook with four Green Shirts surrounding her. She was looking up directly into Forbis’ eyes, defiant to the end. Nail had never met a woman with that kind of courage. Forbis pressed his pistol against her forehead. One of the cadets, perhaps more squeamish than the others, walked off with his back to the developing scene.

She had seconds left to live.

Nail dropped to one knee to use his uplifted leg as a brace. It was a long shot, even for an expert marksman. For Sharon’s sake, his first shot had better be good.

He squeezed the trigger. The Glock bucked in his fist.

Forbis jerked as the bullet slashed through his brain. His weapon discharged at the same instant and appeared to blast a plume of flame directly into Sharon’s skull. Her body plunged out of sight into tall grass next to the stream. Forbis toppled the other way, dead before he hit the ground.

“
Sharon!”
Nail bellowed.

Too late. Just like before.

Rage and grief drove him headlong toward where Sharon went down. Heedless of his own safety, his gun spitting fire in all directions, he charged directly through the three surviving Green Shirts. Caught by surprise, in shock at witnessing the annihilation of their leader, they lost their nerve and scattered without so much as drawing their weapons.

At the same time, armed men exploded from the underbrush on the other side of the brook, splashing through the water in full cavalry mode. Nail attempted to take a shot, but his gun was empty. Somewhere within the fog of combat that enveloped his brain, he heard a familiar voice shouting.

“James, no! It’s us, bro’!”

With a muffled sob, Nail dropped to his knees in the grass next to Sharon. He crushed her limp body into his arms, against his chest. He heard a gasp, felt her move.

“
Sharon?”

“What?
What?
I can’t hear anything. Everything’s a roar.”

Nail’s bullet had smashed into Forbis’ brain just in time. The boom of the Green Shirt’s gun next to her head had deafened her.

“I knew God would bring you in time,” she managed.

With Sharon safe in his arms, Nail became once more cognizant of his surroundings. Forbis lay unmoving nearby, his skull ripped open and brain matter spilling out into the grass. Smitty was on his knees next to Nail, vomiting up breakfast. Several men Nail recognized from the Defenders’ meeting at the schoolhouse took up a perimeter around them. A black Incredible Hulk fell on both knees to embrace Sharon and Nail together.

“You two all right? God, when I thought... We almost not make it in time.”

“How did you find us?” Nail began.

“No time explain, bro’. Got to get the hell out. They be coming like cockroaches.”

Nail helped Sharon to her feet.

“What are you saying?” she shouted, still deaf from the gun shot.

Big C had a 30.06 Winchester with scope slung over one massive shoulder. Nail’s eyes hardened when he looked back toward where he last saw Henshaw and his squad. The job wasn’t finished yet.