Stand Your Ground (33 page)

A hand reached down to pluck the detonator from the planks. Colonel Thomas Atkinson gripped it tightly. He had reached the top of another ramp just in time to grab the detonator.

The colonel nodded to Lee and grinned for a second, as if to say, job well done.

Then he shouted, “Let's get these people out of here!”

All of Lee's muscles seemed to turn to water as he thought about how close they had come to being blown sky-high. He had to lean against the railing to steady himself.

Gibby appeared and asked, “Are you all right, Officer Blaisdell?”

“Maybe,” Lee said. “Maybe.”

He heard only scattered gunfire now. Governor Delgado's special force had done its job. The Battle of Fuego—the Second Battle of Fuego, he corrected himself—appeared to be just about over.

And this time the good guys had won.

But most of the terrorists were out at Hell's Gate, and they could still get what they wanted.

Unless there was somebody there to stop them.

“All right,” Stark said as he stood beside the hatch. “Down you go.”

Kincaid and Cambridge were poised beside the opening, each armed with a rifle and two pistols. Stark didn't care much for the idea of just the two of them going out there, but this sort of operation called for a small, fast-moving force. Using Cambridge's knowledge of the labyrinthine network of tunnels, they could pop out, do some damage to the terrorists, and disappear again before any of the enemy knew what had happened.

That was the plan, anyway.

In the meantime, Stark would be in charge of the defense here in the maximum security wing. He had been involved in the defense of the Alamo from the Mexican army a few years earlier, so trying to hold off an overwhelming force was nothing new to him.

“It's four a.m. now,” Kincaid said. “We'll be back by six . . . if we're coming back.”

“All right, but don't blame me if you're later than that and I don't give up hope,” Stark said. “Things like this have a way of not going exactly according to plan.”

Kincaid laughed. “That's the truth,” he said. “Good luck, John Howard.”

“Same to you boys,” Stark said.

Kincaid and Cambridge climbed down through the hatch and disappeared into the tunnel. Stark closed the hatch behind them and fastened it securely. They had worked out a simple, primitive, but effective signal that could be given by tapping on the underside of the hatch. If whoever was guarding the hatch on this side didn't hear that signal, it would stay closed to prevent the terrorists from following Kincaid and Cambridge back here and getting into the wing that way.

When the two commandos were gone, Stark stepped out of the maintenance area and motioned for Simon Winslow to come over.

“Do you know the opening of ‘Louie, Louie'?” Stark asked the computer hacker.

Winslow frowned and asked, “What? I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, Mr. Stark.”

Stark tried not to sigh at how culturally deprived this kid was. He knew everything there was to know about computers but didn't know how the most iconic garage rock song of all time began.

Stark used his knuckles to rap out the rhythm on the wall. He did that several times and asked Winslow, “You got that now? It's important.”

“I got it,” Winslow said, and at Stark's insistence he rapped out the tune himself. Then he asked, “Now, what am I supposed to do about it?”

Stark led him to the hatch and pointed at it. Winslow's eyes got big with surprise.

“You're going to stand right here,” Stark told him, “and if you hear somebody tap that tune on the other side of the hatch, you come and get me right away. And there's no need for you to go and tell anybody about this.”

“Is this going to help us get out of here alive?”

“Maybe,” Stark said. That was still a long shot, but it wouldn't hurt anything to spread a little hope around.

“Then I'll do exactly what you say, Mr. Stark. You can count on me.”

Stark clapped a hand on his shoulder and said, “I hoped you'd feel that way, Simon.”

He left Winslow guarding the hatch and went back out into the main part of the wing. Things had finally settled down somewhat as more of the prisoners went to sleep, although a few arguments were still going on between the regular inmates and the terrorists. The correctional officers who had holed up in here were taking turns sleeping, too.

Alexis Devereaux and Travis Jessup were stretched out on pallets made from blankets spread on the floor. With drool leaking from their open mouths, neither of them looked ready for prime time anymore. Alexis looked especially haggard, and Stark wondered if that was from not only fear and the physical toll of their ordeal but also because she'd been disillusioned in her admiration for the Islamic extremists.

Doubtful, Stark decided. People like Alexis who had made a religion out of their liberal politics couldn't allow anything to shake their faith, or else the whole underpinning of their existence would fall out from under them.

Riley Nichols came out of the restroom used by the correctional officers. She nodded to Stark in the dim light and said, “Everything's quiet, isn't it?”

“For now,” Stark said. “It's a while yet until dawn, though.”

“Hamil's deadline.”

“Yep.”

“I'm a little surprised the President hasn't issued an executive order telling you to release those terrorists. It seems like something he'd do. Democrats all love executive orders—when they're in the White House.”

“And that's a permanent state of affairs now, most folks believe,” Stark said.

“Probably. As long as things are the way they are now.” Riley smiled. “Things have a way of changing when people who used to be free get beaten down long enough, though.”

“Until the last ten or fifteen years, I'd have said you were right. Now . . .” Stark shook his head. “I just don't know anymore. It may be that the country's too broken to mend itself.”

“You're not saying we should give up hope?”

“Never,” Stark said. “As long as good folks are drawing breath, there's still hope.”

“Even if they're outnumbered?”

“Even if they're outnumbered,” Stark said.

He had a feeling the world might be seeing that for itself before too much longer . . . even if he wasn't around to witness it.

“Where's Lucas?” Riley asked.

Stark hesitated. Kincaid hadn't told her what he and Cambridge were going to do, even though Stark had hinted that maybe he should. Kincaid had said there was no real need for her to know. That was true from a strategic standpoint. Stark wasn't sure it was from an emotional one, though.

“He's around, I suppose,” he said.

Riley's eyes narrowed with suspicion. She had good instincts, Stark thought.

“He's up to something, isn't he?” she said. “But what in the world could he do? He's trapped in here like the rest of us.”

The hell with it, Stark told himself. It couldn't hurt anything to tell her about it now. Kincaid would either make it back . . .

Or he wouldn't.

 

 

Compared to some of the places he had been in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, these tunnels weren't too bad, Kincaid thought. The ceiling was high enough he didn't have to stoop, the concrete floor wasn't covered in sewage, and low-wattage bulbs mounted in wire cages every so often provided light.

And nobody down here was trying to kill him . . . yet.

“Where do you want to go first?” Cambridge asked.

“Where does the tunnel to Administration come out?”

“In Warden Baldwin's office.”

“Good a place as any to start, I guess,” Kincaid said. “There's a chance nobody will be in there. None of the security systems are run from there, so there's no real reason for the terrorists to leave somebody on guard.”

“I agree. It's this way.”

Cambridge seemed to know where he was going. After they had trotted through the tunnels for a few minutes, making several turns seemingly at random, Kincaid asked, “Have you actually been down here exploring before, Mitch?”

“Well . . . no,” Cambridge admitted. “But I've studied the plans extensively.”

“What if something got built a little different from the plans?”

“I can't think of any reason why it would.” Cambridge shrugged. “But if we run into that, I guess we'll just have to figure it out.”

That was no more of a risk than any of the others they were running, Kincaid thought.

A short time later they came to steel ladder rungs set into the wall. Kincaid looked up a short, circular shaft and saw a hatch similar to the one in the maximum security wing.

“What if it's locked on the other side?” he asked.

“It shouldn't be,” Cambridge said. “All the hatches can be dogged down from the top side, but the plan was to leave them where they could be accessed from underneath. Otherwise they wouldn't serve the purpose they were intended for.”

“Again with the plan.”

Cambridge shrugged and said, “Let's go find out.”

He started to grab hold of a rung, but Kincaid said, “I'll go first.”

“Why?”

“Just in case there's trouble waiting for us up there.”

“I can handle trouble. I've already fought with those terrorists.”

“I've tangled with a lot more of their cousins,” Kincaid said.

“Overseas, you mean.”

Kincaid just grunted. He had already spilled his guts to Stark, and he still didn't know what had possessed him to do that. He wasn't going to tell his life story to Cambridge, too. For one thing, there wasn't time.

“I'll go first,” he said, his tone not allowing for any argument.

Cambridge grunted and said, “Up you go, then, if you feel that strongly about it.”

Kincaid went.

The hatch cover wasn't fastened down. He spun the wheel and raised it without any trouble. The two men emerged in a closet that opened onto a darkened office. A little light penetrated the room because the door into the outer office and the door beyond that into one of the main corridors were both open.

Kincaid's jaw tightened as he looked around in the dim glow and saw how thoroughly the place had been trashed. The terrorists had had fun breaking and ripping and even pissing and shitting on things, judging by the stench that filled the room. They were animals, Kincaid thought, then corrected himself because that comparison wasn't fair to the animals.

Voices from somewhere outside the office made him stiffen.

He motioned to Cambridge and then ghosted across the room toward the door. They eased through the outer office and then paused in that doorway.

Two of the terrorists were coming along the hall, talking to each other in Saudi. Kincaid understood enough of the language to know they were talking about the American girl who had been raped to death the day before. When they laughed, it was all Kincaid could do not to step out into the corridor and hose them both down with the semiautomatic rifle in his hands.

That would make a lot of racket, though, and he wanted to avoid that as long as possible. Instead, he and Cambridge hung back in the shadows until the two men passed the door.

Then Kincaid stepped out, caught one of the guys from behind with the rifle across his windpipe, planted a knee in the small of his back, and broke his neck with a sharp tug and push.

A few feet away, Cambridge used his rifle to cave in the other terrorist's skull.

They dragged the bodies into the office. It might be a while before anybody came looking for the dead men.

It was a start, Kincaid thought.

For the next hour and a half, he and Cambridge moved through the sprawling prison like phantoms. They waited for good chances to strike, killing terrorists one, two, or three at a time. Once they opened fire on a group of six men, cutting them down before they knew they were in danger. By the time any of the other terrorists responded to the sound of shots, Kincaid and Cambridge were back down in the tunnels.

Kincaid could just imagine how the rumors were starting to fly up there. Men were dying, and no one would know how the Americans were managing to kill them. Some of the terrorists were probably starting to get pretty spooked by now.

Kincaid wasn't sure if this would do any good in the long run, but it sure felt good to deliver swift, irrevocable justice to those scum. He had hoped they would find Phillip Hamil somewhere in the prison. If they were able to capture the Sword of Islam's leader, that would give them a bargaining chip they might be able to use. So far, though, they hadn't been that lucky.

“It's not long until six o'clock,” Cambridge said. “We should probably start back.”

“Yeah,” Kincaid said. “Wouldn't want to miss Hamil's deadline at dawn.”

They had only gone part of the way, though, when a massive explosion shook the entire prison, even down here in these secret tunnels.

Men ran to meet Hamil as he brought his car to a screeching, skidding halt inside the prison compound. The guards outside the prison had let him through since they recognized his vehicle.

“Where is Raffir?” he snapped as he got out of the car.

“I've sent someone to get him,” one of the men replied.

“Never mind. Take me to him.”

Hamil stalked into the prison's main building, where Raffir met him in the lobby, hurrying and looking sleepy. It had been a long night.

“We saw an explosion in town,” Raffir said. “What happened ? Did the Americans—”

“Never mind,” Hamil interrupted him. “I want us to break into the maximum security wing. Now.”

“Doctor, you don't know what's been going on out here. Somehow—I, I don't understand it—but somehow the Americans have been able to kill some of our men—”

“Listen to me,” Hamil said. “I. Don't. Care. Get into that wing and kill them all.”

Hesitantly, Raffir said, “If we use explosives powerful enough to breach the sally port, we'll be risking injury to some of our imprisoned brethren.”

“There is no gain in life without risk. If some of them are injured or even killed, the rest will be freed. Those who die will be holy martyrs.”

“Of course, Doctor. I'll give the orders.”

“See that you do,” Hamil said.

Raffir rushed off. Hamil paused and rubbed his temples. He had thought that he slept restfully, but now weariness had settled in on him. This had gone on too long. The best, most effective strikes were those that were over quickly, leaving death and devastation in their wake.

He thought about what Raffir had said. It
was
troubling that the Americans had been able to fight back and kill some of his men. They should all have been bottled up in the maximum security wing. It was possible, Hamil supposed, that a few of them had managed to hide while his forces were making their sweep through the rest of the prison, but not likely.

Troubling or not, the problem was irrelevant. Soon
all
the Americans would be dead, those unjustly imprisoned would be freed, and he would be a hero from one end of the Muslim world to the other.

And this was just the beginning, Hamil vowed. Soon the Muslim world would have no end. It would encircle the globe, and rivers of blood would run in every country as he and his fellow warriors claimed the planet for Allah's greater glory.

“Doctor,” Raffir said, breaking into Hamil's vision. “The device is ready.”

“Then use it,” Hamil said.

 

 

Stark still wore a watch. Many of his generation did, even though younger generations relied on their phones to tell them the time. Those phones did practically everything except tuck you in bed at night. Some of them probably had an app for that.

When Stark looked at his watch and saw that the hour was getting on toward six o'clock, he thought about Kincaid and Cambridge and wondered where they were. Kincaid had said they would be back by six. Dawn, the deadline that Hamil had set, was less than an hour after that.

It would be here before you knew it, he thought.

Riley came into the guard station. She had been pacing worriedly for a while, ever since Stark had told her what Kincaid and Cambridge were doing.

“They should have taken me with them,” she said. “I used to be a Marine.”

Stark smiled.

“Yeah, I know. You told me.”

“Well, I could have helped,” she insisted.

“I don't doubt it. It wasn't up to me, though.”

“Evidently it wasn't up to me, either,” Riley said. “I swear, if Kincaid went off and got himself killed—”

“Hold on a minute,” Stark said. He had been watching the video monitors, and he had just spotted movement on one of them. He leaned forward for a better look. Riley came up to his shoulder to join him.

“What is that?” she asked as they watched an ungainly object rolling along the corridor toward the rubble that blocked it. “It looks sort of like . . . a hotel serving cart. Like they use with room service.”

“Nobody's pushing it, though,” Stark said. “That's some sort of remote-controlled robot.”

He had a bad feeling about this.

Suddenly, he told Riley, “Get everybody back along the cell block as far as you can, away from the doors.”

“Crap, crap, crap,” she said under her breath as she started out. “That thing's some sort of bomb.”

“That's what I'm thinking,” Stark said as he hurried to the sally port's inner door. He started firing his rifle through the gap at the advancing robot.

His shots didn't do any good. The thing was heavily armored, he thought. But it couldn't reach the outer door because the corridor was blocked. In fact, it had bumped up against the rubble now and stopped. It couldn't come any closer.

The top of the box-like object slid back, and something started to rise out of it. Stark recognized it as a rocket launcher. He fired several shots at the rocket, hoping to detonate it. But again the bullets just bounced off harmlessly.

Stark leaped to the control panel and slapped the switches that closed the doors. As they started to grind shut, he offered up a silent prayer that the reinforced doors would be strong enough to withstand whatever was coming.

The doors hadn't quite closed all the way when the rocket launched, trailing smoke as it flew the fifty yards along the corridor. It wouldn't have mattered if they had.

The explosion blasted both doors to smithereens and threw John Howard Stark backward into blackness as if he were a rag doll.

 

 

While Stark was shooting at the robot, trying futilely to stop it, Riley ran into the wing and started shouting.

“Everybody wake up! Wake up! Get to the far end of the wing! Now! There's a bomb! Run, damn it!”

She paused and bent to grab Alexis Devereaux's arm. She hauled the older woman to her feet and gave her a shove.

“Move!”

“What—what are you doing?” Alexis demanded. “How dare you—”

“I'm trying to save your life, you stupid bitch,” Riley snapped. “Your friends are about to unleash hell on us.”

J.J. Lockhart ran up and asked, “What is it, missy? What's goin' on—”

She pushed him toward the far end of the wing, too, and told him, “Just go!”

Everyone—guards and inmates alike—stampeded away from the entrance, yelling about a bomb. The terrorist prisoners in the cells started clamoring. There was nothing Riley could do about them, but she herded everybody else away from the sally port.

Satisfied that panic was going to clear out this end of the wing, she turned around and started back. She didn't see Stark anywhere, and if he hadn't been able to stop what was bound to be a lethal robot, he needed to get out of there.

Before she could reach the guard station, an explosion rocked the floor under her feet. A giant ball of fire bloomed at the entrance to the wing, and a wave of concussive force slammed into her, lifting her off her feet and throwing her backward.

She slammed into the floor and blacked out, but when she began to regain her senses she could tell that only a few seconds had passed. Smoke billowed from the area where the guard station had been. It stung her eyes and nose and made her cough as she pushed herself up on an elbow.

Everything was oddly silent. She realized the explosion had deafened her, and she could only hope that her hearing would come back.

Of course, that might be a minor worry in the long run.

She looked around and saw a crumpled shape lying a few feet to her right. She recognized the man as Stark and scrambled onto hands and knees to crawl over to him.

As she did, she took stock of her own condition and realized that nothing seemed to be broken. Her body worked all right, even though it ached like it had been pummeled by giant fists.

The blast must have blown Stark clear of the guard station, she thought. He was lucky it hadn't incinerated him. He still might be dead, though. The bomb's concussion might have broken his neck and pulped every bone in his body.

Riley grabbed Stark's shoulders and rolled him toward her. His eyebrows and mustache were singed, and blood oozed from several small cuts on his face. She didn't see any major injuries, though, and when she searched for a pulse in his throat, she found one. He was alive, although she couldn't have said whether he had any internal injuries.

“Come on, Mr. Stark, we need to get out of here,” she said. She heard the words only vaguely as an echo inside her skull.

Stark didn't respond. His eyes remained closed. Riley glanced toward the wreckage of the guard station and the doors.

Ruthless killers were going to be coming through that cloud of smoke any second now, she thought.

A massive form suddenly loomed over her. She looked up and saw Billy Gardner reaching down for Stark.

“Let me give you a hand with him, ma'am,” the former gangland bodyguard and enforcer said.

Gardner's voice was tinny and distant, but Riley heard it. That was one small sign of encouragement in the violent chaos. She scrambled to her feet as Gardner lifted Stark—who was a big man and no lightweight himself—and draped him over a shoulder.

Angelo Carbona had followed Gardner. He urged, “Hurry up, Billy! Those terrorist guys gotta be on their way in.”

Riley spotted a rifle and a pistol lying on the floor nearby. She grabbed the rifle and used her foot to send the pistol sliding toward the old mobster.

“Mr. Carbona!” she called to him. “Get the gun!”

She knew Kincaid had been opposed to the idea of arming the inmates, but he wasn't here right now and neither was Cambridge. Stark was unconscious.

So Riley was going to do what she thought best.

“Thanks, doll!” Carbona said as he reached down and picked up the pistol. He straightened, pointed it at Riley, and opened fire.

She realized—luckily in time not to kill him—that he was shooting
past
her, not at her. She turned and saw several figures emerging from the smoke. They had scarves wrapped around the lower halves of their faces and carried rifles and machine guns. Riley started shooting at them as she backed away.

She and Carbona dropped three of the attackers and made the others scatter. That gave Riley and Carbona the chance to run after Gardner, who loped along easily with Stark's senseless form over his shoulder.

Several correctional officers ran to meet them. They provided cover as Riley and the others retreated. As she hurried past an open door that led into a maintenance area, she saw Simon Winslow standing next to the hatch where Kincaid and Cambridge had left the wing a couple of hours earlier.

“Simon, come on,” Riley called to him. “We've got to pull back. They've breached the doors!”

“Mr. Stark told me to stay here,” Winslow objected. “I'm supposed to listen for a signal and unfasten the hatch when I hear it!”

More gunfire filled the air as the guards battled with the terrorists. Winslow probably wouldn't be able to hear anything, even if Kincaid and Cambridge returned and gave the signal.

Maybe they were safer down there in the tunnels, Riley thought. With the bloodthirsty terrorists now pouring into the cell block, lying low might give them their best chance for survival.

Riley found that she was surprisingly okay with that. She wanted Lucas Kincaid to come through this alive, even if she didn't.

“Come on, Simon,” she said again.

He swallowed hard.

“Do . . . do you think I should unfasten the hatch?”

Riley shook her head and said, “Leave it dogged down.”

She hoped Kincaid wouldn't wind up hating her for that decision.

Winslow joined her and Carbona. She hustled both of them along the cell block. At the far end, benches and tables had been piled up to form a makeshift barricade. It would give the defenders some cover for a little while, but it wouldn't hold back the terrorists for long. They swarmed like vicious, mindless insects, willing to die for their twisted, hate-filled beliefs.

With bullets whipping around and above their heads, Riley, Winslow, and Carbona made a run for that small measure of safety. Somebody on the other side of the barricade pulled a bench aside, and the three of them darted through that opening. Men shoved the bench back into place.

As the shooting continued, Riley paused to catch her breath and look around. She saw Alexis Devereaux huddled in a corner, disheveled and red-faced from sobbing in terror. Travis Jessup stood near her, pale with fear but holding a rifle, Riley noted with surprise. Evidently, desperation had forced the newsman to find a little courage deep inside himself.

John Howard Stark was conscious and on his feet, although he looked pretty shaky and Billy Gardner stood next to him with a hand on Stark's arm to steady him.

“Mr. Stark,” Riley said, “are you all right?”

Stark tapped his left ear and said, “Can't hear you very well, Riley. I was too close to that blast. But I reckon you asked if I was all right. I am, especially considering that I could've been blown to bits.”

“Can you take over? I don't know what to do now.”

“Only one thing we
can
do,” Stark said. “Fight as long as there's breath in our bodies.”