Vindicta, p.23
Vindicta, page 23
“This is it. We have to walk from here,” he said, getting out and shouldering his rucksack.
Kim got out and Kate slid after her. McCain and Reed watched the woods on the far side of the vehicle as Red came over warily with her team.
“Someone want to tell me what the hell is going on?” he asked.
“It’s Kim, of course,” Kate said.
“I can see that. Are we trusting her?” he asked.
Storm looked at Kim. “For now.”
That seemed good enough for Red. He shrugged and motioned for Dana and the others. “What’s the plan?”
“We head up this ridge to Donny’s bunker. File formation. Only step where I step. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are mines and booby-traps. I’ll take point.”
Kate started to get nervous. It didn’t sound worth it.
“I’ll take point,” Kim said. “I can see some of them, even from here,” she said, her eyes moving up the heavily wooded ridgeline.
Storm raised an eyebrow and motioned for her to move out. They followed, barely reaching the treeline before she stopped them.
“Stop!” she called and sprang forward.
She became a blur and a sudden snap whipped through the air as a green branch sawed back and forth through the scant trail. She snatched it right out of the air, stopping its lethal movement. They all saw the sharpened spikes of wood.
“That would have been a horrible way to die,” Kate said.
“Indeed,” Red said from the back of the formation.
“Should we follow this path?” Kate asked. “Wouldn’t it be safer to go around all this?”
“No. This was the one that Donny used. He would have put fewer traps along here. The woods out there are a death trap, and one side is very steep and probably also a death trap.” Storm smiled. “He called it Firebase Dolly, after a girl he once knew.”
They worked their way up the ridge, minutes turning into hours faster than she would have liked. At this rate, it would be dark by the time they got up there.
“Stop,” Kim called back again. “Storm, come look.”
Everyone froze while Storm crept forward and knelt.
“Shit. The old bastard has frags,” Storm said. “Red, wire cutters.”
Red stepped along the narrow path, not moving more than a few inches to the side as he advanced. He held out the cutters to Storm, who snipped the wire.
“The safety is gone,” he murmured. “See how he pulled the pin,” he said, turning to show Kate the first can. “The can holds the spoon in place. If we’d have tripped that wire, the frags on both sides of the trail would have been pulled out. The levers would have popped off and we’d all be several limbs lighter…and probably dead.”
“What are you going to do with it?” she asked.
“Any tangos in the area?” he asked Kim, who stood and smelled the air, turning in a circle.
She nodded. “A few.”
“Then we won’t be tossing them over the ridge,” he said. “Red, bring me the duct tape.”
“Duct tape?” she asked skeptically. Red smiled.
She watched them duct tape the can closed, then wrapped many layers around the body of the covered grenade. Red dug a hole and they covered it and tamped it down.
“Theoretically, as long as nobody digs it up, it should be fine,” Red said, then helped Storm with the second one.
“Should be fine…” she repeated, dumbfounded that they were duct-taping an actual grenade to keep it from blowing up.
“It’s okay,” Red said, holding up a dirty hand. “I was in EOD for a while.”
“A while?”
“They kicked me out for my unorthodox methods,” he said grinning.
“That is not true. He was never in EOD,” Storm said.
“I don’t know if that makes me feel better or worse,” she retorted.
“Let’s get moving. We aren’t safe here come nightfall,” Kim said warningly.
Storm motioned for them to move out.
Kate was drenched in a nervous sweat and couldn’t help but keep looking at the ground for more bombs. She didn’t know exactly who Donny had been, but he seemed to have been one crazy SOB.
“Freeze!” Storm said, pointing at a nearby tree. “Claymore!”
Red followed the line up to where Storm stood. “It’s not armed.”
“Then there are two more around here somewhere that are,” Storm answered distressingly, narrowing his gaze and scanning the trail.
“There. Wires,” Kim said, pointing to a narrowed place in the trail. The two convex, rectangular boxes blended in well. It was scary how close they were to being blown up.
She wouldn’t have made it very far alone.
“Everyone stay where you are. Red, circle around and disarm the one on the left. I’ll take the right. Watch for other traps.”
Kate clenched her fists around her rifle as they left the trail and moved into the dense vegetation. She hadn’t spotted the claymores in the trees, not the dummy or the two live ones. She heard the crackling of twigs under their feet and the spring of a trap to the left.
“Red?!” she called.
“I’m good, Bubba,” he called back. “Old Donny didn’t get me this time.”
He sounded amused.
Finally, they both came back carrying the claymores and the wires they had been attached to. She said nothing as they put them in Red’s bag.
“We’re almost there,” Storm said, pointing at an old wooden sign. It simply read:
FB DOLLY
Ahead, she saw a few pipes sticking up from the ground and a cinderblock structure ringed with a tall wooden fence and barbed wire that looked like it had seen better days.
There were three wooden towers constructed around the perimeter in a triangle shape. They still looked safe enough.
“This is it?” Reed asked.
Storm grinned in reply.
“Is it safe to look around?” she asked.
“Not yet,” Storm said. “Kim, see if you can find any more boobytraps. Red and Kate, come with me.”
Kate wiped the sweat from her face and grimaced as it stung her eyes. The sun had come out and the heat climbed back to its previous high level. The humidity had become extreme.
She needed to chug some water and get out of the sun.
Storm motioned them to go around the corner of the cinderblock building and he stood behind the metal door. He cracked it open and it swung outward as he crouched and covered his ears.
There was no explosion.
He crept forward and shined a light in the doorway, along the door frame, and overhead. “It’s clear,” he called. “Probably knew I was coming.”
“And he left all that shit in the woods?!” Kate replied.
“He wouldn’t want to make it too easy for me.”
Kate followed them into the small room and looked around. It looked like a relic from the Seventies. An old Army cot sat along one wall, covered with a multi-colored, crocheted blanket in stripes of mustard, avocado, orange, and black. Spare OD green Army fatigue tops hung on a couple of hooks and dusty tiger-striped pants were folded on one shelf.
Well-worn boots sat under the cot, along with some dusty magazines.
Books covered another shelf, some westerns, along with a few dog-eared Army manuals. A framed flag and medals hung on another wall. The Silver Star and Purple Hearts hung prominently in the center.
There was a small pantry and an even smaller propane fridge that looked new, sleek, and out of place among the artifacts of a bygone era. She opened it and it was warm. There was nothing inside except a few bottles of water.
“I’m guessing that is where he kept his insulin?” she asked.
Storm nodded as he fiddled with a large metal footlocker. He didn’t open it. Instead, he pulled it away from the foot of the cot, the bottom scraping along the floor with a painful screech.
There was a trapdoor set into the floor.
“You think he might still be in there?” Red murmured.
Storm grimaced. “I hope not, because I think we’re going to be here a while. I didn’t like bunking with him when he was alive, and I sure as hell don’t want to bunk with him when he’s dead.”
“Want me to go first?” Red offered.
Storm shook his head, tightened his lips, and yanked open the metal door.
A waft of warm, stale air came out of the hole, but there was no scent of death. Storm shone a light down before he started to descend the rusting metal ladder.
Red stuck his head out the door. “All clear?” he called out to the others.
“It’s clear. They’re setting up in the defensive positions for now.”
“Good,” Storm answered, his voice floating up from the dark.
“Kate, come on down.”
She wasn’t thrilled about it.
Chapter Twenty
Sappers in The Wire
Kate- Past
The underground bunker was a treasure trove of ammo boxes, olive drab weapons cases, and other assorted surplus gear. A Communist flag hung on the wall, along with a helmet bearing a star and a pair of primitive sandals.
Storm turned on a battery-powered lamp.
“Donny brought those back. Shipped them right on home. They got here before he did,” Storm said. “I think he picked up a couple of pistols too.”
“Can we use this ammo?” she asked, touching the locking mechanism on one of the cases.
“Should be able to. As long as it isn’t rusty,” he said, brushing past her to go to the rifles mounted on the wall. “Probably take a few of these too.”
“How are we going to get this stuff down the mountain?”
He grinned. “Are you feeling strong today?”
Sweat gleamed on his skin in the faint lantern light and he looked boyish and happy for the first time ever, that she had seen.
“There’s a note here,” she said, looking at a corkboard on the wall.
Storm pulled down the smudged envelope. He opened it up and smiled. “It’s for me.”
He scanned the lines and his grin grew as he approached the end. He shook his head and refolded it before pocketing the letter.
“He decided to take the fight to the enemy. Took what was left of his insulin, some explosives, and his jeep from his secondary location. Said he was heading west. I expect he took a lot of those things out with him.”
“Was there a date on there?”
“August first.”
“That was only a few weeks ago!” she said.
He nodded. “Maybe if we’d gotten here soon—”
A gunshot popped faintly overhead.
“Contact!” Red called down from the building above. “Kim said a pack is forming to the east. Headed this way!”
“How long?” Storm yelled, climbing the ladder. She followed.
“Not long enough for us to get back to the vehicles,” Red said as Kim came to the doorway.
“I sensed thirty to forty of the creatures. They’re smart. They’re mostly supers, though there are a few normal freaks mixed in.”
“McCain just took out one of the vanguards. The rest scattered,” Red said, pulling his sweaty boonie hat off and brushing his hair back before resituating it on his head.
“But they aren’t gone. They’re waiting for us out there,” Kim said. “We could make it to the vehicles if we run, but even then we probably wouldn’t all make it—not even with me spotting.”
Kate looked at the guard towers surrounding the small, makeshift compound. They were meant for human enemies, not freaks. It wouldn’t take much for one of the super freaks to leap up there.
“We’ll pull in and set up a tight perimeter around this building. We’ll have the doorway as a chokepoint in need be, and the trapdoor will be another—”
“We’d be trapped,” Dana pointed out.
Storm looked at her with pride. “That’s right, but it’s still better than being out in the woods with those things in the dark. If I’m not mistaken, they have some kind of night vision capabilities?” he said with a look at Kim.
She nodded solemnly. “Heat sensing.”
“Here we stand a chance. Now, let’s get set up.”
◆◆◆
It was suppertime, but it wouldn’t be dark for another couple of hours.
They heard occasional pops from the woods surrounding them, and the swishing of tree branches. Kate felt like every cell in her body was on high alert, waiting for an attack.
She hated it.
Red and his fire team were at the rear of the single-entry building. It was the most dangerous position. Storm had a team on another corner and she took the third, using the peculiar triangle shape that she noticed with the watchtowers.
Kim was roving beyond the wire, patrolling the outer perimeter at lightning speed. She would be their early warning.
Storm and Red had set up mines at each corner of Firebase Dolly, and the little metal clackers look innocuous where they lay on the low concrete wall. Storm had given her a quick rundown on how to use them in case something happened to him and the others.
She hated to tell him that if he was gone, and Red, and McCain, and Reed, that she and the civvies wouldn’t stand much of a chance of surviving—even with the explosives. So, she kept her mouth shut.
At dusk, Kim came back.
“They know what we’re doing. We’re going to have to lure them in,” she said. “Otherwise they’ll just stay out there indefinitely.”
“Lure them in how,” Storm asked through narrowed eyes.
Kate turned from her sector and looked at them in crouched conversation. She could just barely hear them.
“Put one of the women out front and center along the wall or in a tower. The ones out there know that you have weapons.”
“No!”
“It’s the only way,” she replied patiently.
“I’ll do it,” Kate said.
“No, you won’t and that’s an order,” Storm retorted.
She gritted her teeth. “I can do it.”
He ignored her and had McCain take his place as he went around the back of the building.
Kate knew that the only way to lure them in was to do as Kim said. If anyone could be the bait, then she would have said so. For some reason, the freaks didn’t consider a woman to be a threat. She almost smiled as she gave Kim a nod. “I’ll go to the gate.”
“I’ll take them out as they come. When they start to overwhelm me, I’ll come back in and we’ll take our positions,” Kim said.
Dana swallowed, but nodded and knelt down so she’d be prepared to fire more accurately. Tricia didn’t look thrilled, but her glance toward Storm’s corner let Kate know that it was fear of Storm that had her hesitant, not the freaks.
Storm had left Rob on his corner alone for the moment, and Kate knew he wouldn’t try to stop her. She walked out to the front of the firebase, where the entrance was only barred by a simple wire gate. She glanced out and saw Kim give her the signal to halt.
Kim could almost be mistaken for human in the dark.
Kate scanned the trees, hearing cracks and rustles that could be small nocturnal animals or murderous monsters. She paced along the front, rifle ready.
She wasn’t prepared for the firing that came from the rear of the little compound.
Red’s team must be under attack!
Storm had told them over and over that they each needed to hold their corners. That they weren’t to leave their corners under any circumstances because it would weaken their entire defense.
She had agreed at the time, but she hadn’t realized how difficult it would be to keep to her word. She wanted to rush over and help.
When Rob started firing, she realized that Kim was fighting with two of the supers.
She couldn’t catch the movements because they were too fast, but she could see when one of the things broke away and sprinted toward her. She fired and felt a sense of satisfaction when it went down. Kim managed to drop hers with a very vicious cracking sound that might have been the monster’s neck.
Kate’s grim smile faded when she saw the shadowy mass fade in from the trees.
“Shit!” Kate yelled at the same time Kim whipped around and disappeared from sight.
Explosions, pops, and screeches echoed from the woods surrounding the firebase. Donny had done well. It seemed as if not all freaks were as competent at detecting traps as Kim was. Tricia and Dana had moved up and met her halfway between the building and the gate.
“Tricia, hold them off. Dana, get the clacker on the left!” she yelled pointing toward Rob’s corner.
There was no way that he could stop firing at the advancing line of fiends.
She dashed to the right as a large creature scurried around the corner and made a leap for the legs of the guard tower. She heard the left Claymore explode. She flipped the safety on hers and clenched the device three times.
On the third, a massive boom and the sticky, squelching sound of steel ripping through freak flesh filled the air almost simultaneously.
She rushed back across the yard as Dana and Tricia regrouped near the building’s doorway.
They fired into the thinned-out crowd of freaks. Some fell and others began to fall back to the shelter of the trees, where they would find Donny’s trap, Kim’s wrath, or safety.
Red’s team rushed around Rob’s corner and she saw McCain with a nasty gash on his head. They looked pale in the moonlight, but only the civilians—former civilians— looked to be in shock. This kind of thing wouldn’t be new to the guys.
“Storm, there right on my ass. We’ve got to bring up more ammo and—”
“He’s not here!” Kate yelled.
“Shit!” Red cursed, his eyes wide.
Kate dashed toward the opposite corner of the building and her heartbeat stuttered into a frenzied tattoo of fear and anger.
Storm was in the middle of the crowd, and he was fighting hand-to-hand.
Kate raised her weapon and began picking off the outliers as she walked forward. As much as she wanted to run, she couldn’t. Her aim just wasn’t that good while running.
He was grunting and swinging his knife in an intricate dance with death as the grasping, clawing creatures darted forward and retreated. He spun away from a particularly brutal swipe when he spotted Kate.
