Stand Your Ground (32 page)

Lee's heart pounded in his chest as he got back in the pickup with Gibby and stuck one of the AR-15s out the open window. Engines rumbled as the vehicles in the convoy began spreading out, following Atkinson's orders. It didn't take long until everyone was in position.

Atkinson and Porter led the way. The sergeant's foot tromped down on the gas, and the pickup spurted forward. All the other drivers in the long line followed suit, and the sound of engines turned into a deep-throated roar.

The terrorists would hear them coming, thought Lee, and even in the starlight, they could probably see the big cloud of dust that rose from the wheels.

Lee saw a flash through the windshield, and off to the right an explosion bloomed redly in the pre-dawn darkness. That was a rocket or a bazooka or some sort of artillery round. No telling what sort of armament the sumbitches had, Lee told himself. They certainly had plenty of money behind them, so they could buy whatever they wanted.

Middle Eastern oil money. Some of our so-called allies, Lee thought bitterly.

Then he put that out of his mind. He saw more flashes up ahead and knew he was looking at muzzle flashes. The terrorists had set up a defensive line to keep them from getting to the stadium.

Suddenly, Porter flicked his pickup's lights on. That was the signal for everybody else to do the same. The lights would give the terrorists something to aim at, but for a few moments the unexpected glare would blind them first.

Lee leaned out the window and opened fire with the semiautomatic rifle. On the other side of the seat, Gibby kept his right hand on the wheel and stuck his left out the window with a pistol in it, firing as he drove.

Lee tried to keep his shots low. He didn't want any of his bullets ranging into the stands around the football field. There were enough gaps between the bleacher seats that slugs might go through them and hit some of the hostages.

There was no road where Gibby drove. The pickup bounced and careened over the open ground. That played hell with a fella's aim, but under these conditions nobody could hope for any real degree of accuracy, anyway. They were just here to make a lot of racket, at least at this point in the attack.

Another explosion sent one of the pickups flying into the air. It landed in a fiery rollover crash. As the rest of the line raced past it, Lee knew that the men in that truck couldn't have survived. Atkinson had warned them there would be more casualties to go with all the people who had already been murdered by the terrorists. He'd sure been right about that.

Lee's mouth was dry, and so was the magazine in his rifle. He swapped it out and kept shooting. They were only about a hundred yards away from the perimeter established by the terrorists, and closing fast. Lee heard bullets thudding into the pickup around him. The windshield shattered, spraying glass back across him and Gibby. Lee didn't even have time to throw an arm up to protect his face. He felt the sting as the shards cut his face, but none of them found his eyes.

That was all that mattered. He could still see to shoot.

The pickup gave a great shudder and lurched to a stop. Steam billowed up from the bullet-pierced radiator.

“Grab a rifle, Gibby!” Lee shouted. He flung the passenger door open and rolled out of the cab. As he stood up, he used the open door for cover and continued shooting at the muzzle flashes he saw.

There seemed to be as many of them as there had been stars in the sky earlier, the last time he had held his wife in his arms and tasted the sweetness of her kiss.

 

 

Phillip Hamil had slept the sleep of the just. The hundreds of deaths he had set in motion didn't haunt his dreams. He knew that his bloodthirsty god approved of them.

The alarm on his phone went off an hour and a half before dawn. He had to look good for the cameras, so he had showered and was shaving when the knock came on the door of his motel room.

Hamil frowned when he opened the door and found Jerry Patel standing there. The motel owner looked sick and hungover and scared. He said, “There's shooting.”

“Where?” Hamil asked curtly.

“Out by the football field, I think. I thought you would want to know—”

Hamil stepped out onto the concrete sidewalk in front of the rooms and listened. He heard the gunfire, punctuated by grenade blasts.

“The Americans are attacking again,” he snapped. “The men monitoring the satellite feeds must have been warned. Why wasn't I notified?”

“I . . . I'm sure I don't know, Doctor. Maybe—”

Hamil waved away Patel's stammering response. He said, “It doesn't matter. I'll go find out what's going on.”

He knew there had been no new developments at Hell's Gate. Raffir would have called him if there were. But something was happening here in Fuego in advance of his dawn deadline, there was no doubt about that.

He shooed Patel away and went back into the motel room to finish getting dressed. When he emerged a couple of minutes later and started toward his car, he wasn't quite as dapper as he would have liked, but history was sometimes messy, he reminded himself.

He had just reached the car when some instinct made him look up. His eyes widened as he saw large black shapes blotting out part of the stars. It took him only a second to realize what they were.

Parachutes.

And those weren't his men dropping into Fuego.

Those damned Americans! He couldn't believe they were attempting such a double cross. He had been assured that there were enough sympathizers—indeed, enough active agents—within the federal government that no one would interfere with whatever the Sword of Islam did.

Someone would pay for this treachery, Hamil thought as he jerked the car door open. He would take particular pleasure in beheading the dog himself, if that was at all possible.

In the meantime, what was happening at the football stadium wasn't as important as the situation at the prison. As Hamil started his car, he thumbed a button on his cell phone. When one of his lieutenants at the stadium answered, he said, “Blow up the place! Now!”

The man sputtered a little, but Hamil knew he would do as ordered. He broke the connection, tossed the phone on the seat beside him, and gunned out of the parking lot.

He hadn't gone a block when two black-suited, body-armored soldiers landed on the street in front of him with black parachutes billowing down around them. Hamil's foot came down hard on the gas as the Americans tried to right themselves and bring their weapons to bear. He didn't give them time.

He hit one man straight on, full force, and clipped the other with the car and sent him spinning away. That slowed Hamil down for a second, but then he accelerated again and sent the car screaming down Main Street and out the other end of town. He veered hard onto the road leading to Hell's Gate.

He would rain down bloody vengeance on the Americans, he thought as his hands tightened their grip on the steering wheel and the speedometer needle climbed past ninety miles per hour.

But behind him, it was justice that continued to descend on Fuego.

 

 

Everything was ruined, Jerry Patel thought. His faith had deserted him. The Sword of Islam was going to fail. At the very best, he would spend the rest of his life in prison.

He stood there in the dimly lit motel office and looked down at the gun he had placed on the counter in front of him. It was a revolver, a Smith & Wesson .38. He had bought it years earlier to keep in the office in case of an attempted robbery. He had fired it a few times on the range, then hadn't touched it for a long time. He was fairly confident it would still work, though.

He picked it up and wondered if he could find the courage to do what needed to be done.

He put it back down.

Behind him, his wife said anxiously, “Jerry, what are you doing?”

He jumped a little, said, “Lara!”

“Were you going to kill yourself ?” she asked. Her voice sounded cold and angry to him.

“I . . . I . . . The Americans are attacking the football stadium. Dr. Hamil left. It's all going wrong, Lara. It's going to fail.”

“You pathetic coward,” she said. “Allah can never fail.”

“No . . . but we are just men. We can make mistakes.”

“
I
made the mistake when I married you. I never dreamed you would turn out to be such a weakling.”

Her words cut him to the bone. He had thought they were happily married for a long time. Now he realized that had all been a lie.

At least something happened then to distract her. She exclaimed, “What's that?” and hurried past him to the big window that looked out on the parking lot. Patel came out from behind the counter to join her. He muttered a curse as he saw the big black shapes floating down onto the parking lot like giant bats.

“American soldiers,” he said.

“Take the gun,” Lara said. “Go out there and fight them.”

“I . . . I . . .”

“You dog!” She wheeled around, went to the counter, and picked up the revolver. “If you won't fight them, I will!”

As she started toward the office door, Patel moved hurriedly to stop her.

“Lara, no!” he said as he clutched her arm and tried to turn her toward him. “You can't—”

The gun went off.

Patel felt as if a huge fist had punched him in the belly. The slug's impact doubled him over, unhinged his knees. He collapsed as searing pain filled his body.

He didn't lose consciousness, though. He was still awake and aware as he watched his wife rush out of the office in her nightgown and bathrobe, crying, “Help me! Help me!”

In the glow of the lights scattered around the parking lot, Patel saw the soldiers disengaging themselves from their parachutes. They turned toward Lara as she hurried toward them, no doubt seeing only a hysterical woman who represented no threat.

Then she proved them wrong by taking the gun from the pocket of her robe and opening fire. One of the soldiers fell. She had taken them by surprise.

But only for a second. Then their automatic weapons came up and flame danced from the muzzles and Lara fell backward as dozens of bullets tore through her body. She hit the parking lot pavement hard and didn't move again.

Inside the office, on the tile floor, Patel sobbed, both from the pain of his own wound and his grief at his wife's death. He couldn't help but wonder, though . . . had she pulled the trigger by accident when he grabbed hold of her?

Or had she meant to kill him because of the disgust she felt for him?

He died without knowing the answer.

 

 

Lee heard Colonel Atkinson shouting, “Go! Go! Go!” He and Gibby lunged out from the cover the stalled pickup had given them and raced through the predawn gloom toward the stadium, firing as they ran.

Over the past few minutes, Lee had heard shooting erupt in other parts of town and knew the main thrust of the attack was under way. The paratroopers were reaching the ground and engaging the terrorists. Something blew up, sending a pillar of flame into the sky several hundred yards away.

It made sense that Hamil had sent the main body of his force out to Hell's Gate to try to take the prison, leaving only enough men in Fuego to keep the town under control. He couldn't have expected an airborne assault from the State of Texas. But that was what he was getting.

The threat of the explosives planted under the bleachers remained, though. Lee and the men with him needed to get in there, kill the terrorists guarding the prisoners, and get all those innocent folks out of the stadium before something awful happened.

Lee emptied his rifle again, switched out the magazines. He had just put the last full mag in the weapon, he reminded himself as he motioned for Gibby to follow him. He ran toward the field house, knowing there was a gate there leading into the stadium.

Bullets sang through the air around them. Men yelling and chanting in their native language ran around firing wildly. They wanted to die and be martyred.

Lee obliged as many of them as he could.

Then he and Gibby were past the field house, past the ticket office, running along the open area underneath the stands. Lee looked up, saw the bundles of explosives attached here and there.

If those suckers were to go off now, there wouldn't be enough of him and Gibby left to bury, he thought.

He spotted one of the terrorists running up a ramp that led to the seats. The man had an automatic weapon in his hands, and Lee didn't doubt for a second that he was crazy enough to start mowing down the prisoners. Calling to Gibby, “Watch my back!” he went after the would-be mass murderer.

Lee heard the machine gun chattering and people screaming before he reached the top of the ramp. As he emerged into the open, he saw the terrorist spraying bullets into the crowd as he shrieked out his hatred.

Lee fired without taking the time to aim, but instinct guided his shots. The pair of slugs from his rifle ripped through the terrorist and drove him back against the railing that ran along the front of the stands. The man flipped up and over it, falling out of sight.

Then Lee saw something that made the blood in his veins turn to ice. Farther along the walkway at the front of the bleachers, a man was down on both knees, leaning forward with his head pressed to the planks. He was facing toward Mecca, Lee realized, which meant he was praying. This sure wasn't the time and place for that, Lee thought, unless the fella figured he was about to die . . .

The man raised his head and lifted something in his right hand. Lee's eyes widened as he saw a little red light blinking on the object.

It was a freakin' detonator!

Lee didn't stop to think. He brought the rifle to his shoulder, took the tiniest fraction of a second to aim, and squeezed the trigger. The rifle kicked against his shoulder as it went off.

The bullet went in the back of the terrorist's head, shattered his skull, bored through his brain, and destroyed his nose as it exploded out through a fist-sized hole in the middle of his face. His thumb had almost reached the button on top of the detonator, but his hand opened automatically as all his nerves spasmed in death. The little cylindrical object dropped from his fingers and rolled toward the edge of the walkway.