Rise From The Ashes: The Rebirth of San Antonio (Countdown to Armageddon Book 3) (23 page)

     Their war plan was sound. At the first sign of trouble, Sara and the kids would evacuate to the basement. It was the safest place in the house once the bullets started flying.

     Sara would man the backup security system from the basement, and would tell everyone upstairs where all the bad guys were. Until they got smart enough to shoot out the cameras, at least. Tom hoped they were stupid enough not to notice them.

     Besides Sara and the children, everyone else would man the windows upstairs, shooting anything that moved from the firing ports on all four sides of the house. All lights would be extinguished on the first floor, and since the downstairs had no firing ports there would be no sunlight coming in. It would be pitch black.

     At the first sign that the first floor might be breached, someone would run downstairs and man the new fortification in the den, wearing night vision goggles. The hope was that intruders bursting through the doors would be blown away before their eyes adjusted to the pitch blackness.

     At least it sounded good in theory. No one wanted to find out if it was going to work in practice.

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     In nearby Junction, Tony and Kevin were making their own plans and preparations.

     “This time we leave early enough so we have some daylight. We take our own damn ladder and rope. We’ll also take some bolt cutters and some pruning shears. If that fence has a gate with a padlock on the outside, we won’t even bother going over the damn fence.

     “And if it’s easier to cut our way through that mesquite tree than to drag it, then we’ll have that option too.

     “We’ll time it so we get there with at least an hou
r of daylight. We’ll try to pull the tree again, like we did last time. If we can’t, because they still have it attached to the tractor or whatever they pulled it back with, then we’ll see if we can cut our way through. The guys that aren’t doing the cutting and pulling can provide cover.

     Once it’s dark, we’ll send in a couple of guys to scout the area. They can walk the entire perimeter of the fence and see if there are any padlocks anywhere. If they can find one, they’ll use the bolt cutters and cut it off, and that’s how we’ll get in.

     If we can’t go through a gate, we’ll go over the fence.

     The eight of them gathered at a bar in Junction in mid afternoon. Most of the good stuff had been looted, but they managed to find two bottles of cheap whisky in a cabinet in the manager’s office.

     Tony poured each of them a shot.

     “This is just to calm everybody’s nerves. We’re gonna kill a lot of people tonight. Some of them will probably be kids and old people. I don’t want anybody backing down. If you back down, you’re no longer one of us. If you show them any mercy, you’ve become one of them. Anybody who shows
them mercy will be shot dead along with them. If you can’t abide by those terms, now’s the time to walk.”

     No one walked. It didn’t necessarily mean they liked his d
emands. It mostly meant they were afraid to cross him. And that if they walked they might get a bullet in the back.

     The group’s hesitance to cross Tony or to dispute his instructions meant something else, too. If they were able to successfully breach the compound and take
it over, everyone inside of it would die.

     Tony put the two bottles of rotgut into his saddlebag. The reason they’d chosen this particular bar as their
rendezvous point was the six foot aluminum ladder Tony had seen not long before, standing in the back corner of the store. Once upon a time, it was used to put Budweiser Styrofoam coolers and Miller Lite blow-up easy chairs on a high shelf for display.

     These days, it just collected dust.

     Getting it on horseback was an adventure unto itself. Tony had one of the more experienced riders mount up first, and then tried to hand the ladder to him.

     The horse, of course, wanted nothing to do with the ladder and bolted. The horse was terrified, and the rider was almost knocked off his back by the ladder.

     They tried the same thing with a different horse. This one didn’t bolt, but was very uneasy. As soon as she knew the ladder was aboard her, she lowered her head and moved it from side to side, fighting the reigns. They removed the ladder and the rider got off to calm her.

     The rider waited a few minutes and mounted up again.

     This time they brought the ladder up from the rear and were in the process of handing it to the rider to lay across the front of the saddle. They almost succeeded when the horse sensed something was amiss and kicked. Her left hind hoof caught one of the men square in the shoulder and sent him flying.

     Tony went over to the man and said, with not a hint of sympathy, “If your shoulder is broken, you’re staying behind. I don’t want no damn cripples on this trip.”

     The man stood up and was able to work his arm. Although he was in agonizing pain, he said, “Screw that. It ain’t broken. I’m going.”

     For almost an hour the group more resembled the Keystone Kops than vicious marauders.

     In the back of a nearby stable they finally found Betsy. Betsy was an old Bay that had been turned into a pack horse when she started to go blind. She was used to being led instead of ridden, and didn’t much mind what was strapped across her back.

     Not even a six foot
aluminum ladder.

     Bets
y was slow, but they weren’t in any hurry. Most of their crew was more comfortable on a Harley than a horse’s back, and two had never been on a horse at all.

    Tony was aware of this going in, and it was the reason he’d insisted on meeting so early. Even with the delay and their slow pace, they’d still be back at the old man’s ranch with
an hour of daylight to spare.

     The ladder securely in place, Tony told the rest of them to mount up, and they set off.

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     When they arrived at the end of the county road a hundred yards from Tom’s ranch, Tony told the others to stay put. He and Kevin went ahead to scout the ranch and make sure it was unoccupied.

     Tony sent
Kevin back fifteen minutes later to get the rest of the crew.

     While he was waiting, Tony found the sign that Tom had left to scare them off.

STAY OUT

OR DIE.

     It didn’t work. Tony wasn’t afraid of much of anything. In fact, he loved a good challenge, and he viewed the sign as an invitation.

     But there were others in his group who were more easily intimidated.

     Before the others arrived, he pulled up the sign and tossed it aside.

     In the daylight, Tony could see through the dead branches of the mesquite tree and make out the rope that was tied across its trunk and which staked it to the ground.

     He cursed under his breath and walked fifty yards on each side of the fallen tree. He could see that the other dead mesquites were anchored down in a similar fashion.

     Now he was getting angry. He seemed to take the residents’ efforts to protect their property as a personal affront. In Tony’s twisted world, it was a personal insult to him.

     And it wouldn’t go unanswered, or unpunished.

     “All right, this just slows us down a little bit, but it doesn’t stop us. I’m a lot smarter than these sons of bitches think I am.”

     He took a section of rope and wrapped it around several of the branches at the top of the fallen tree, careful not to get stabbed by any of the inch long thorns. Then he had one of his men stand off to the side and pull the rope, to draw the branches out of the way.

     He did the same thing to another set of branches, and had another man pull them aside in the other direction.

     He chuckled at his ingenuity.

     “Just like Moses parting the sea.” he muttered.

     It took a little bit of work, but with the tree’s top branches pulled out of the way, Tony had a tunnel of sorts to walk into. He entered the tunnel with the pruning shears he’d brought along and snipped each of the branches as close to the base of the tree as he could. One by one they fell away, until the tension on the two ropes was completely gone.

     Tony had successfully created a passageway, free of the thorny branches, that extended all the way to the center of the tree.

     Then he stepped back and found Lolo, the youngest and smallest member of their group.

     Lolo was technically still a kid. Barely fifteen, he wasn’t much to look at. Short and skinny, with buck teeth, he didn’t look intimidating at all.

     But in the harsh world of street gangs, looks could be deceiving. Often, the smallest members of his gang were the most vicious. Lolo had street cred. He’d earned it through brutality, and his weapons of choice were a four inch blade and a four foot chain.

     He’d bring his victim down with the knife and then beat them bloody with the chain.

     And he needed very little reason to do so. Sometimes he used this method to rob innocent bystanders of their money. Sometimes all someone had to do was look at him the wrong way.

     His biggest claim to fame was beating a man to death at a bar. Just for questioning the authenticity of the Mexican Mafia tattoo on Lolo’s forearm.

     The fact was that Lolo wasn’t a member of the Mexican Mafia. He was a wannabe who just claimed to be.

     And the penalty for calling him on it was death.

     But as vicious as he was, Lolo knew Tony was the boss. This was Tony’s operation, and Lolo was a good soldier.

     So he’d follow directions, as long as it wasn’t a suicide mission.

     “Lolo, you’re small enough to crawl through there. Crawl through and untie this bastard so we can pull it out of the way.”

     Lolo did as instructed while the others were retying the ropes to the remaining branches at the top of the tree.

     And twenty minutes later the tree was pulled out of the way and off to the side, and the group was in the north field.

     There was just enough daylight left to make out the trench. It took Tom and
Jordan half a day to make it, and it would have worked well had the marauders come in the darkness. But in the waning hours of the day, they could see it, and simply went around it.

     It was much like the famous Maginot Line the French had built to protect themselves from the Germans in the buildup for World War II. The line itself was impressive, but too short. The Germans simply went around it.

     But the trench served a psychological purpose if not a practical one. As they passed by the end of the trench, one by one the men looked into it to see how deep it was.

     And one by one, the men saw the pointed spikes that would have impaled them had they fallen in.

     And one by one the men came to the realization that they were facing a formidable enemy. Tony had played this off as a camp of old women and children, with maybe a couple of old men to help out with the chores.

     Several of the men started to worry, and started to wonder if Tony was leading them into something they might not be able to handle.

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     They stayed at the trench, unwilling to move any closer to the compound until darkness fell. The field was almost two acres in size, and had been cleared for farming. There were no trees or shrubs to hide behind, and if they crossed it in the daytime they’d be sitting ducks for any good rifleman.