Silent Interruption (Book 3): An Uncertain Passage Page 14

  “Now, how about I have my last bit of fun before I go inside?” Harper backed up one step. “I don’t want to shoot you too closely. Blowing your head open this close would get blood all over my pants and I don’t want to have to scrub the blood out. Can’t go to the laundromat either.” He chuckled. “What a screwed up world this is—”

  A shot rang out, but it wasn’t Harper’s. Carl’s would-be killer suddenly spun around with a blob of blood shooting out of his back and speeding past Carl’s face. Harper spun around and around until he slammed down onto the dirt, his legs slumped onto the top of the slope.

  Carl stumbled to his feet. “Harold?” He tried to call the name, but instead only could whisper it, still too winded from his ordeal. He turned his head. No, he didn’t see Harold. So who shot Harper?

  The answer soon revealed itself, or himself. Michael ran through the clearing near the top of the ravine, shouting at the top of his lungs. Before Carl could climb up the inclined landscape, Michael had reached Harper, who was still conscious but moaning, and began beating the man with his fists.

  “Michael!” Carl scrambled up the slope but slid back down. His balance was slow in returning. Meanwhile, Michael was savagely beating Harper, striking him in the face with blow after blow. Then Michael reached down and picked up a rock. It was smaller than the one he had used to pulverize the man who had shot Rupert, but Michael obviously didn’t care as long as he had something heavy to pound his enemy. Michael thrashed Harper in the face with the rock over and over again.

  Carl finally had managed to scale up the ravine and reach Michael. “Michael, stop!”

  Michael had saved Carl’s life, but Michael’s shouts and screams were sure to draw attention. Only the fact that the thunder was rumbling more frequently and the land was being hit with a steady rain offered some cover for Michael’s screams. But Carl had to stop him.

  Carl finally grabbed Michael’s arm as he swung it back for one more blow. Then he used his body as leverage to pull Michael down to the ground. The rock fell from Michael’s hands, but then he started screaming and struggling, crying “No! No! No!”

  “Michael, it’s me, Carl!” Carl cried as he tried to hold Michael down. “Your friend!”

  But Michael kept struggling, and Carl still was too out of it to keep the man pinned. Michael wrenched free and spun around, meeting Carl face to face.

  With the additional crackle of thunder above, Harold knew one hell of a storm was approaching. The irony of it all was that such a storm could be a good thing. The cover provided by the rain would make it much harder for the men inside the house to spot them approaching. The noise of the pounding raindrops would also mask the sounds of their footsteps. But not knowing where Tara and Shyanne were in the house still could be the handicap would costs those two their lives.

  Harold turned his attention toward Matt. The boy was examining the house. Harold followed his son’s gaze. He had located a window near the corner. Harold snuck up to Matt and looked directly through the glass.

  Shyanne was seated on a small bed while Tara was fluffing up a pillow. A man was stationed by the door. His camo mask was off, revealing a bearded young man who appeared a little bored, though his gaze was locked onto Tara as she made the bed. Neither of the girls looked harmed, no injuries, and no blood or torn clothing.

  That won’t last, Harold thought. The intensity of the rain picked up. Putting all those men inside a small dwelling like that was bound to act like a pressure cooker. They wouldn’t act like gentlemen, to the extent they were acting like ones now, for very long.

  “We have to regroup with Carl,” Harold said.

  Chapter Eighteen

  With Michael standing before him, Carl finally could gauge how bad off Michael looked. Blood covered his face and chest. His shirt was torn down the middle, exposing his upper torso. Michael’s eyes were wide and shaking. His mouth was slightly open, ejecting and inhaling breath with the intensity of a jungle animal. As animalistic as his movements appeared, he still retained the coherent thought to holster his gun in his belt, the firearm likely taken from the man who had killed Rupert. But his mind still was trapped in a Neverland where Carl had trouble penetrating. At least Carl knew that Michael was not acting deliberately.

  “Michael,” Carl said, a little more gently this time, “you have to snap out of this. Tara—”

  Michael rushed at Carl before he could finish his plea. The two men struggled mightily on the increasingly slippery ground. The rain was turning the ground into a massive mud pit. Carl tried keeping Michael away from the ravine, as falling into it could risk serious injury or death for either one of them.

  However, that did not mean the trees weren’t a problem either. At one point, Michael slammed Carl against one of them. Small twigs dug into Carl’s back. The former Marine yelled out in pain. Michael also screamed again in fury. Carl had no choice but to slam his head into Michael’s chest to get him to loosen his grip.

  It worked. Carl’s blow flung Michael loose, enough for Carl to regain some momentum. He quickly pressed on with a hard punch, one that Michael dodged, but only barely. Michael’s movements were quick and sharp, like a jungle cat. Carl wondered if, in Michael’s dreamlike state, the man even thought of himself as human anymore.

  “Michael!” But this time Carl punched as he pleaded. His next blow missed. He wasn’t in very good shape either, or that blow would have connected. “Listen, dammit! Wherever you think you are, it’s not real! You’re in a forest! Feel the rain around you!” He threw more punches. Michael retreated back into the woods, away from the ravine.

  “Tara’s been taken! We’ve got to work together to free her and Shyanne!” Michael then decked Carl on the chin. Carl fought the pain and the impact of the blow to keep talking. “If you don’t get it together, those men might hear you. Hell, they may be on their way now!”

  Michael bellowed even louder as he threw another punch. Carl ducked. Michael’s knuckles struck a tree trunk instead. Michael, crying out in pain, recoiled. He clutched his fist as he stumbled backward.

  God, I hope that brought him back to his senses. The rain was intensifying. The falling water ought to help bring Michael out of his frenzy.

  Then, Michael’s injured hand reached for his gun.

  “No!” Carl tackled Michael just as he pulled the gun free from his belt.

  Carl quickly grabbed Michael’s shooting arm and held it up so the shot would fly upward if Michael pulled the trigger. Michael shouted and wailed as Carl held onto him. The two bounced off two nearby trees until they slammed into a pool of mud. Carl slammed Michael’s gun arm repeatedly to get him to drop the firearm, but he clung to it as if for dear life.

  Then, finally, Carl’s blow freed the gun from Michael’s hand. Carl snatched it and aimed it at Michael’s head.

  “Stop! Just stop!” Carl feared he might take this too far in trying to stop Michael. Even if Michael’s screams posed a risk of revealing them to Ben, there was no way Carl could shoot the man just to stop him. Michael wasn’t the enemy. He was a friend, a wounded man who needed help.

  “If you don’t stop, then Tara’s done for!” Carl cried.

  Michael lunged for the gun, but Carl struck him in the face and kept hovering over him with the gun. “Michael, goddammit! I know you think you’re under attack by anarchists, by a roving band that wants to kill you and Tara, but if you don’t break through, if you don’t see who the real enemy is, you’re going to fail the person you care about! You hear me? Tara!” He shouted the name over and over again, determined to blast through Michael’s internal wall. “Tara! Tara!”

  Michael’s head shook. He had balled up his fist, ready to punch again, but then he stopped. “Tara?” He looked around, as if he finally was aware of his surroundings for the first time. “Tara? Where…” He then cringed. “Where is she?”

  “They took her. They took her, but we still can get her back,” Carl said, “But you have to pull it together. I know this is tough. I
’ve seen guys who served go through a similar kind of Hell and the pain never, never fully goes away. But now it’s just us versus the world. There’s no hospitals, no doctors, no psychiatrists. We’ve got to do this. You’ve got to do this.”

  Michael’s breaths turned to wheezes for a while. “Tara. She’s gone. I…I failed her.”

  “No, you didn’t. You saved her once. You can do it again. Let me help you.”

  Michael trembled. He was blinking rapidly, either from tearing up or the constant strikes of raindrops, or both. “Carl,” he said, as if right now, he fully had registered Carl’s identity. Then he raised his hand.

  Carl quickly took it. As Carl rose to full standing height, he pulled Michael up, who now felt much heavier. Since he had snapped back to reality, he had relaxed considerably, no longer acting in such frenzy. Carl also feared that the toll of their previous fight had worn them out too much to take on Ben.

  The pair leaned against a large tree trunk. The leaf cover above deflected most of the rain, but not all of it. The shelter was only enough for them to catch their breath.

  A brilliant flash of light temporarily blinded them. A loud clap of thunder followed. Michael looked up at the tree. “This…this isn’t a good idea.”

  Carl wiped excess water off his face. “I know, but any port in a storm.” Another bolt of lightning flashed, but this time not very close. “You remember when Harold ran all you guys up the trees?”

  “Yeah.” Michael nodded. “I do. Everything’s a lot clearer now. Even…” Michael bowed his head. “Rupert. He didn’t see it coming. The shot just came out of nowhere. He fell, and I…” He clutched his head.

  “Hey,” Carl said, “don’t think about it too much. You couldn’t have saved him.”

  Michael looked up, gazing off past the ravine in the distance. He spoke again, but he sounded calmer this time. “What do we do? You’re the soldier. I don’t know shit about how to go about things like this.”

  Carl then spotted Michael’s gun on the ground. “Leave the thinking to me.” He reached down and picked up the gun. “Just make sure when the time comes, you’re ready to give hell to the people who deserve it.” Then he handed the gun to Michael.

  “I will.” Michael took it as the skies above lit up once again.

  The pouring rain made traveling back up the ravine worse than ever. Carl and Michael had to grab onto anything that looked solid, from tree roots to tree branches to thin tree trunks to get them up the slope to the level ground. Even once there, with the water pooling on the ground in spots, Carl could not tell if his next step would be on solid ground or into a small pit flooded with water. As much as he wanted to get to the ranch house, he could not go barreling toward Ben’s hideout in this weather.

  After Carl and Michael finally had left the ravine behind, three forms approached through the storm. Michael’s hand reached for his weapon, but Carl quickly said, “Wait! That’s Harold and his boys!” Michael immediately withdrew. Carl noted how swiftly Michael responded. He was not lapsing into a traumatic flashback as before. That still could change, but for now Michael showed greater lucidity than he had in previous situations.

  I’m taking a risk with him, but I don’t have a choice, Carl thought.

  “Tara and Shyanne are being held in one room near the back,” Harold said, “One guard last time we looked.” He turned to look at Michael. “You okay, sir?”

  Michael straightened up to full height. “As okay as I’ll ever be.”

  “What about the men?” Carl asked.

  “They’re grouped in the front,” Harold said. “They were going over gear they had found in Camp Jefferson. They didn’t seem interested in the girls, at least not at the moment. Matthew also found something you’re going to want to know about.”

  Michael then picked things up by saying, “The men have two large fuel tanks on the side of the home away from Tara and Shyanne. I didn’t see any labels, so I don’t know what’s inside them.”

  “Could be heating oil and propane,” Harold said, cutting back in. “It’s a small house. I wouldn’t put it past the owners to have gathered some heating oil for winter time.”

  “But the tank, it’s closer to the men, right?” Carl asked, “Closer than to Shyanne and Tara?”

  “Yes, Mister Carl,” Matthew replied.

  Carl glanced at Michael. “Then we may have a way to turn this thing around.”

  “I know what you’re thinking, but it’s raining cats and dogs. How are you going to ignite the tanks? Hope lightning strikes them at the right moment?” Michael asked.

  Carl looked down at his handgun. “One good hit should do it. It’ll set off a spark inside the tank and set it off. The rain won’t be able to stop it.”

  “But we got to make sure Tara and your little girl Shyanne aren’t near that part of the house when it goes up,” Michael said.

  “That’s why this is a team effort.” Carl turned from Michael to Harold. “How many entrances are there to that house?”

  “Two,” Harold replied, “Front door, back door. The girls are the closest to the back.”

  “Then that’s how we get in. I blow the gas, Michael goes into the back and you and your boys take out any pursuers at the front. I’ll hurry to join you to back you up. I want them to think we’re coming at them through the front door.”

  “You sure you don’t want to call up Lorenzo and Preston for this little maneuver?” Harold asked.

  “Lorenzo’s got a wife to protect, plus there’s Ricardo and his mother. Sorry, but I’m not risking all of them on this. Those bastards caught us by surprise once already. That’s not happening again.”

  “You’re one hell of a guy, Carl.” The voice came from Preston, who was hiking up through the trees. “But you’re not keeping me out of this fight. I’m bringing Shyanne out and you’re not going to stop me.”

  “Preston!” Carl looked over Preston’s shoulder, fearing that Lorenzo and Alicia had joined him as well, but it turned out Preston was alone. “Damn.”

  “You need all the help you can get.” Preston turned to Michael. “No offense to Michael here, but you may need one more person in the mix who isn’t…” Preston grimaced. “…getting back on his feet, if you know what I mean.”

  Michael frowned, but he seemed to stifle any protest he was about to voice. He had to know that Preston had a point, even if he didn’t want to admit it.

  Carl decided that any further debate was pointless. If he had another man to pull off this rescue, so be it.

  Ben turned his head to the kitchen window over the sink. More thunder. It wasn’t a substitute for television, but he would take what he could get.

  Most of his men remained seated at the kitchen table. By now the group had divided the body armor and weapons they had taken from Camp Jefferson amongst themselves, though Harper’s load had been, during his absence, taken and divided up. Ben didn’t care. If the moron was too stupid not to take his stash with him when he went outside, he couldn’t complain when he came back to find it gone. You carried your own weight around here. That was the way Ben ran things.

  If Ben had known it was about to rain, he might not have left the base after his initial attack. He had discovered this small ranch house while scouting for a place to prepare for the assault on Camp Jefferson. It was, to his mild disappointment, empty of residents. Slitting a man’s throat after tying him up could have provided some amusement. He was quite pleased with their work at the country house about a day away.

  The assault on Camp Jefferson, however, reminded him how annoying it was when their prey could shoot back. He had lost almost half of his original pack. Nichols had overpromised and under-delivered. Then again, Ben had felt that Nichols was more mouth than brains since the time he first had met the man four years ago. Nichols’s poor attitude had gotten him in trouble on the base more than once and likely was the reason he had not advanced much in rank. Nichols likely latched onto Ben and his band of marauders as an easy way to get re
venge on an institution he had grown to loathe in the nearly half-decade he had been a part of.

  Well, who the hell cares why he did it? Ben thought. As long as I get what I want.

  “Hey!” Santiago’s loud, booming voice bellowed from the hallway. “Who shit in the toilet?”

  Seated at the table, Seth turned his head and shouted back with a bit of a slur in his whiskey-laced voice, “Hey! I had to go in a hurry and it’s raining!”

  “You dumbass, the toilet doesn’t flush no more!” Santiago shouted back. “Now the hall smells like shit!”

  “So it smells like you then!” Seth called back, followed by a laugh. Some of the men chuckled along with him.

  Santiago suddenly stormed into the kitchen, his large, hairy hands outstretched for Seth’s throat. Seth saw what was coming and jumped out of his seat. Ben, however, wasn’t in the mood and drew his gun.

  “Shut it down, both of you!” Then Ben turned to Seth. “You, how about you walk off some of that whiskey by going outside and finding my cousin. It’s been too long.”

  “But it’s raining out there!” Seth shouted.

  “I can see just fine,” Ben replied blandly. “What of it?”

  Seth trembled. Any of them knew not to cross Ben. “Fine. But I’m not staying out there to find his sorry ass if he’s dead!”

  “Don’t expect you to, just make the effort.” Ben turned aside, but quickly glanced back at Seth. “But just in case I think you’re slumming it, I will decide to take one shot at you if you come back too early. If you don’t want to gamble on me missing your sorry ass when I shoot, you try finding Harper.”

  Seth scrambled to get out of the house, flinging open the door and fleeing into the rain. As Ben paced around the table, Kale piped up with a comment. “Hey. Does Santiago know you can just dump water into the toilet and that’ll flush it?”