HOMELAND: Falling Down (Part 1 of the HOMELAND Series) (7 page)

He looked at the blood smeared across his uniform. A little girl’s blood. American blood. This wasn’t supposed to happen here. This happened in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and a hundred other places like them. But not here.

Amber asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” Cole lied. “I’m good.”

Sergeant Crowe walked up to them and said, “These people are gonna freeze if we don’t do something. Gimme a hand. I got an idea.”

Cole, Amber, and several soldiers from the platoon helped Sergeant Crowe gather empty metal drums from inside the hospital and filled them with anything flammable.

Crowe told them, “We’ll set these on the ground and keep ‘em burnin’ all night. Gather the wounded around them close as you can. Should keep hypothermia from settin’ in. A nice warm burn barrel saved my ass on many a cold night.”

As the men set out the barrels, Crowe said to Cole in a low voice. “It’s time to think tactically. Prepare to defend this position.” He pointed to spots on the edge of the hospital grounds.  I want fighting positions dug there, there, and there. You know the drill. Get moving.”

Amber ran up to Cole. “What’s going on?”

“We may have to defend this position.” Cole pointed to the hospital. “This place is full of drugs, food, and a bunch of other things people will need. If they’re desperate enough, they won’t think twice about killing us to get in.”

Amber shudder as gunshots crackled a few streets away.

Cole looked into her frightened eyes. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”

Private Hicks reported back. “Where’s Sergeant Crowe?”

“He’s over there.”

The soldier ran over to Crowe. “I found Becky.”

“How is she?”

“She didn’t make it, Sergeant. The docs said there was nothing they could do.”

Crowe stared at Hicks, his jaw grinding.

Hicks added, “Her dad said to thank you.”

“You take it from here,” Crow said to Cole, “I’ll check on the L.T…. Ain’t seen him in a while.” The platoon sergeant suddenly seemed old and tired.

Crowe turned and walked back to the hospital, kicking a trashcan over with a curse. Cole saw him wipe his eyes before going in.

The glow of fires in the city silhouetted the buildings nearby, casting ghostly shadows across Cole’s gaunt face as the last rays of sunlight disappeared. He looked at the sick and wounded civilians huddled around the fire barrels. The points of warmth shone brightly in the darkness. It looked as if the stars had fallen to Earth. Cole never believed in astrology, but he could easily read the ominous portents of these flickering terrestrial constellations.

Shouts echoed in the twilight from the edge of the clearing.

“Help!” a woman shouted.

“Hey!” More yelling. A man this time. “Dammit!”

Pop! Pop! Then screams. People running. Stampeding.

“C’mon!” Cole and his men rushed toward the disturbance, weapons at the ready.

A fire barrel went over. Flame danced across the frosty ground.

“Freeze!” Hank shouted as he ran at the front of his troopers.

A thug held a woman by the hair, her body shielding his, a gun to her head.

At their feet lay a well-dressed man bleeding from several bullet wounds to the chest.

“Back off or the bitch gets it!” the gunman yelled.

Sergeant Crowe arrived next to Cole.

“Take it easy,” he said to the gunman. “Put the gun down.”

“You first, soldier boy.”

“I’ll give you anything you want. Just don’t hurt me,” the woman sobbed.

“You can’t win this one. So put it down. Now!” Crowe ordered.

“Please, don’t let him hurt me,” the woman begged.

“Screw you!” The gunman whipped his pistol about and shot the sergeant.

Crowe staggered backward. Cole’s men returned fire as one. The shooter and the sergeant both hit the ground.

“Sarge!” Cole knelt by Crowe. A chunk of the sergeant’s neck was gone. He coughed, spattering Cole’s face with blood.

Crowe’s legs twitched, his eyes a mixture of terror and surprise.

“Hang on, Sarge.” Cole grabbed his platoon sergeant’s hand.

The veteran choked and gagged. His body went rigid, wide eyes staring into Cole’s. He relaxed with one last painful breath. His eyes still stared at Cole, but they did not see. He was gone.

Cole looked to the gunman. He was dead. So was his hostage.

Hicks started pacing. “Oh shit. Oh shit!” He looked at the bodies again. “Oh, God. Oh shit!”

Lieutenant Young burst from the hospital. “We’re pulling out! Now! Mount up!”

Cole remained motionless, still staring into those dead eyes.

Something shook him. It shook him again. Cole looked up from his fallen sergeant to see Reyes shouting at him.

“Sergeant Sexton! We gotta go!”

Cole came to his senses. “What?”

“Back to base! The L.T. said to mount up!”

“We can’t leave these people.” He stood. “Put Sergeant Crowe’s body in my Humvee.”

Cole ran to Lieutenant Young. “We can’t leave.”

“We have orders.”

“These are Americans—Americans we swore to protect.”

“This is not the time, Sexton. Where’s Sergeant Crowe?”

“Dead.” Cole pointed to the soldiers loading Crowe’s corpse into a Humvee. “It just happened.”

Young cleared his throat. “I guess that makes you the platoon sergeant.” He pulled Cole aside and lowered his voice. “We have to pull out. We can’t hold the city together. Charlie Company is getting chewed to pieces a few blocks away. They’ve lost ten men including the company commander. The battalion’s spread too thin. We have to consolidate. We can’t help anybody if we get overrun.”

More shouts sounded from the perimeter. More shooting. More screams. More panic.

“Mount up!” Young ordered.

“You heard the man!” Cole echoed.

Amber ran to Cole and grabbed his arm.

“You can’t leave.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What about the rest of us? What are we supposed to do?”

“I’m sorry.”

“Damn you.” She slapped him, then disappeared into the crowd of sick and wounded.

The ride back to Campbell was cold and quiet. The hiss of dead air on the radio and the drone of tires on asphalt were the only sounds.

Cole reached back to Crowe’s body and touched the dead man’s face. The flesh was still warm.

Two days ago Cole and his men were enjoying hot wings and beer, glad to be back in the U.S.A, and thankful to be alive after seeing so much death. They didn’t realize as they celebrated that death had followed them home.

Cole stared into the darkness beyond the headlights, wondering how so much could go so wrong so fast.

3

HANK

Freeport, Tennessee

7:45 PM

It felt good to be home, even if only for a few hours. Hank kicked off his shoes and eased onto his favorite chair. Rest was a luxury these days for anyone tasked with preserving the peace. He sank into the well-worn cushions, suddenly realizing how tired he was.

“How was work?” asked his wife, Betty, from the kitchen.

“Tough. We’re stretched too thin. Everybody’s working doubles and triples. We had to post deputies at all the gas stations and grocery stores. You wouldn’t believe the lines. Reminds me of the oil crunch back in the seventies, but now it’s food, too. We arrested two people today for fighting over a loaf bread. A damn loaf of bread.” He sighed. “I’ll be glad when this blows over and life gets back to normal.”

Hank found the T.V. remote and turned on the news. The riots were spreading. It wasn’t just the big cities anymore. It was happening in Knoxville now, a mere fifty miles west on Interstate Forty.

“I’m just glad we have you to keep law and order,” Betty said.

“These twenty hour days hurt more than they used to.” He yawned. “I’m gettin’ too old for the sheriff business.”

“You’re not old. You’re just out of shape.”

Hank laughed. He’d put on a few pounds, but was still in better shape than deputies half his age. “I’ll be sixty next year. That, my dear, officially makes me an old man.”

“Papaw!” Hank’s granddaughter ran into the room and jumped in his lap.

Hank quickly turned off the television. Maggie didn’t need to see what it had to offer.

 “Hi, sweetheart. How was your day?”

“Good. We went to church then we went to Cracker Barrel for lunch. It was really good, but we missed you.”

He hugged her and kissed her forehead. “I missed you too, Maggie.” He rubbed his chin, pretending to be confused. “Somebody has a birthday next week. I think she’s gonna be eleven, but I just can’t remember who.”

“Oh, Papaw. You know it’s me.”

He laughed. “You got me.”

The girl had her father’s eyes. His son’s eyes. He wondered how much she remembered about him, gone these five years.

Betty called from the kitchen, “Supper’s ready.”

Maggie hopped down. “You stay there. I’ll get yours, Papaw.”

His cell phone rang. Hank fished it from his pocket with a weary sigh.

What now?

He answered. “Yeah.”

“I’ll be right there.” He hung up the phone.

Betty asked from the kitchen, “What happened?”

“Somebody just robbed the CVS. It’s bad.”

Betty came into the living room. “Dear Lord.”

He got up with a grunt. “Looks like supper will have to wait.”

“Hank, you can’t keep pushing yourself like this.”

“I’ll rest when this blows over. Good thing I’m not an old man.”

Betty went to the kitchen and returned with a paper sack full of hot food. “Take this. Even the sheriff needs to eat.”

He kissed her cheek. “Thank you, sweetheart.”

“Be careful, Hank.”

“Always.” He added, “I’ll be back in time to take you to dialysis in the morning.” He picked Maggie up and hugged her. “Then you and I will go to breakfast before I take you to school. How’s that sound?”

“Yay!” She hugged his neck. “I love you, Papaw.”

“I love you too.”

Hank arrived at the pharmacy minutes later.

A squat, grizzled deputy with a round belly was already there directing four younger officers.

It was Arvine Burchette, Hank’s chief deputy. He was a seventy-year-old retired marine with two combat tours in Vietnam under his belt. He was also quick to remind anyone that there was no such thing as an
ex
-marine.  Everybody called him Gunny.

Gunny met his sheriff at the door. “It’s bad, Hank.” He was the only one on the force with the stones to call him Hank. “I checked the security footage. A male and female, came in just before closing time an’ started shootin’ the place up.”

The scene was the bloodiest Hank had seen in all his years on the force. Two customers, a middle-aged man and an old woman, lay dead in the aisles. Another victim was sprawled behind the cash register. She was young and pretty, her beauty marred by a bullet hole above her left eye. The nametag on her smock read, ‘April.’

Hank said to Gunny, “She was Jeff and Sharron Baxter’s girl.”

“Yeah. Nineteen years old. Worked here to save money for college.”

“Do they know?”

“Not yet. I’ll tell ‘em. They live down the road from me.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. They’re my friends. It should come from me.”

“Okay.” Hank walked to the pharmacy counter. The pharmacist lay on the tile floor amid scattered pills and prescription bottles. Four bullet wounds pierced his chest and face.

“What did they take?” Hank asked.

“Oxys and Hydros mostly. Cleaned out the register too.”

“They didn’t have to shoot him. They didn’t have to hurt anybody. He would’ve given them anything they wanted. Bill was a good man. Never met a stranger. Loved his grandkids. He ran the food drive at our church every Thanksgiving and took food and blankets to shut-ins every Christmas morning.” He sighed, finding it odd what random thoughts run through a person’s mind in a moment like this.

“Hank.” Gunny’s tone carried the promise of more bad news.

“What?”

“One of the suspects. The female. It was Chloe.”

“Oh, God.” Chloe had a brief and rocky relationship with Hank’s youngest son, Johnny twelve years before. She was Maggie’s mother. “I thought she was still in rehab.”

Gunny put a hand on Hank’s shoulder. “You go on home. We got this. I already put an A.P.B. out. We’ll catch ‘em.”

“I have to tell Bill’s wife what happened. Then maybe I’ll go home.”

The drive to Bill’s house felt like an eternity. His wife was devastated. Hank stayed with her until the couple’s daughter made it there. Thankfully, she lived only a few miles away.

He pointed his police cruiser toward home, but turned around when the radio came alive.

“Officer down! Officer down!” The voice blared through Hank’s squad car radio as he sped in the darkness toward the town’s Walmart. “There’s too damn many of ‘em!”

Hank keyed his handset. “Backup is en route! Pull back! Seal off the store!”

“We’ll try!” the deputy responded.

Moments later, Hank’s car squealed into the parking lot with three more behind it. They slid to a halt in front of the store. Fleeing shoppers scattered as deputies returned fire into the front entrance and shepherded the customers out of harm’s way. Muzzle flashes and police strobes gleamed like lightning across the building’s facade.

Hank spotted Gunny behind a nearby cruiser. He popped the trunk, grabbed his AR-15 and tactical gear, and rushed to the veteran’s side as more civilians scurried by. “What’s the situation?”

“They came in off the interstate in six pickup trucks. Shot the deputy on duty.” Gunny said as he reloaded.

“What are they after?”

“Food and drugs. Smash and grab on a soft target. The trucks bugged out when I got here. I emptied my pistol on ‘em as they passed me. I think I hit one of the drivers. They left these guys stranded inside. Five of ‘em best I can tell.”

“Who’s down?”

“Tommy. He was guarding the store. He radioed us before they got him.”

“How bad is he hit?”

Gunny pointed to a prone uniformed figure with a jacket laid over his face. “They got him in the head.”