Chapter 18
Next time don’t tell me
I briefed Marty before we got back to the house. Marty took Melissa out to the beach to keep her entertained while I covered everything with the rest of the group. Within an hour, everyone else was briefed. After a few minutes of getting the wind kicked out of them with this tragic situation they were up and active.
Stacy, Steven and Tony went to the guesthouse to fire up all the communication satellites. They were listening for any chatter that might give us our first break.
Rachel and Chels went up on the roof of the house to watch for anything out of the ordinary coming our way. Since there were three missing SA groups out there, someone obviously viewed us as a threat… a threat that needed to be eliminated.
“Wilson, what would you like me to do?” Meea looked sad, I hadn’t realized until now, but I had never seen her look sad before. I hugged her to me tightly knowing we may not get that alone time I owed her for quite a while.
“I need you to get in touch with your “friends,” and ask them to patrol the coast for us.” Until we found a direction to move in, we were pretty easy targets sitting in this house. Any advanced notice of trouble would help.
“I understand, don’t worry. If danger gets close I’ll know.” An owl hooted as it flew over our heads. “I’m already on it,” Meea smiled slightly and kissed me quickly. She turned and trotted out toward the beach.
I went up to the roof to talk to Rachel and Chels about the surveillance.
“Hi, girls.”
“Hi, Wilson,” they both answered in sync.”
“What do you think. Will you be able to spot trouble from up here?
“Yes, and were clear for now.”
“We have the surveillance covered between Meea’s pets and just one of us. We’ll be a good early warning system, Wilson. So, can one of us help in some other way?” Rachel asked.
“Yes, actually, you can. One of you can stay up here and the other could help me start going through all the files Dr. Ishmail just sent over.
“I’ll stay up here, Rachel, you go down and help Wilson with the files.”
“Sure thing, Chels, I’ll bring you up some coffee in an hour or so.”
“And a donut?” Both girls giggled.
“Yeah, of course, and a donut.” Chels gave Rachel a kiss on the cheek and Rachel followed me down to the kitchen in the main house where I had the boxes of files stacked on the kitchen table.
“Pick any box and well start by putting up a timeline on the big white board I set up. Lets put the facts we find under the time line for each SA group, to see if we can get a pattern or a common thread between them to give us a clue.”
A minute after we started digging into the files my cell phone rang.
“Hello,” I said, motioning to Rachel to go on without me.
“Wilson, its Ishmail. I wanted you to know I’m having some firearms delivered to the house. Since none of you have been through weapons training yet, I just sent over the basics. If anyone isn’t comfortable with a gun, its ok, I just wanted to give you the option. I also wanted you to know that if you need anything, and I mean anything at all, I have access to a lot of things, all but the space shuttle. But… with a few favors... maybe even that.” The doctor laughed still trying to keep things light.
“A snow cone machine would be nice. It gets pretty hot out here in the afternoon.”
“Glad to see your getting your sense of humor back, Wilson. Just yell and I’ll help when I can. Be careful, and don’t forget to take the safety off the gun when shooting bad guys.” The doctor chuckled nervously as he hung up.
We were all trying hard to feel normal again so we would be on the top of our game. I needed a break. I felt useless looking for clues in the piles of documents the doctor had sent over. I wasn’t one of the people that were especially gifted at finding clues, so I decided to help by doing something else. We all still had to eat, so I went into the kitchen to make some food for everyone.
I had Steven monitor the communication station when I pulled everyone together to eat. When everyone got to the kitchen they all piled up a plate of food and sat around the dinner table to eat and relax for a few minutes. I took this opportunity to explain about Dr. Ishmail wanting to give us the option of arming ourselves. I laid out the guns on the table. They were army issue semi automatic forty-five caliber pistols. I asked if anyone objected to carrying one. No one objected, and the guys looked a little too enthused about it. I wasn’t going to supply Steven with a gun since I wasn’t comfortable with how he may handle it. I didn’t believe the risk was worth the reward.
There was also a sniper rifle in the crate that had arrived, which would have come in handy while I was deer hunting in Michigan. I had a pretty nice rifle at home that I was good with but nothing with the kind of stopping power this gun had. There was also a sub machine gun and two shotguns in the crate, but I left all the big guns alone and locked them up.
Everyone went back to man their positions after eating. I fed Melissa and put her to bed, after reading the princess book to her for about an hour. I was just about to sit down to figure out the best sleeping shifts for us, so we could maintain our surveillance of the house when …
“Wilson!” Meea ran into the kitchen on a dead sprint. “Three gun boats are coming fast, about two miles out.”
“Wilson! Wilson!” Rachel was yelling as she ran in through the front door. “Three trucks full of men are coming for us… they’re on A1A about four miles away and they’re headed our way.”
“I can take out the gun boats before they even get close, Wilson.” Meea said, urgency straining her voice.
“Rachel, is Chels on the roof?”
“Yes.”
“Then you go with Meea. Meea, you take out the boats. Let me know if you have trouble or if anything goes wrong. Go!”
“On it!” Meea said as she raced out the back door with Rachel in tow.
I ran to the guesthouse, the guys were scanning too far out to be aware of the imminent danger we were in.
“Stacy, were in trouble, go get Melissa and take her way down the beach and find some cover. Don’t go anywhere until one of us comes for you. Understand!”
“Yes.” She zoomed off in a flash. It was times like these I appreciated that I never had to explain myself to Stacy. She knew how to read people in an instant. That definitely saves time and comes in handy in an emergency.
“How bad is this one, Boss” Marty asked, up and out of his chair already checking the clip in his gun.
“Here are the keys to the other guns. Go get the crate and meet me on the roof.”
“That bad, huh.” Marty said rushing out.
“Tony let’s get up to the roof…Tony, what is it?”
He had an intense look on his face over something he was listening to on his
headphones. He was scanning through pages of documents on one of the green screen computers he had fired up.
“We need to go!” I said.
“I can’t,” he sputtered. “I got something big here.”
“Shit…. OK, keep your head down and we’ll take care of this!”
I got on my cell phone to call for some back up. Dr. Ishmail picked up on the first ring. “Dr. Ishmail let’s see just how good you are.”
“Ok, Wilson – Situation.”
“We have three gun boats coming in off the ocean and three trucks with troops on A1A headed our way. We can take the boats if you can help with the trucks, what do you have?”
“I can have two attack helicopters to you in about five minutes”
“You’ve only got three – go!” I hung up the phone.
“Tony, can you pick up those trucks and helicopters on one of the satellites?”
“Yeah, got them right here.”
“Tell Steven the distance and mph on each.”
“Choppers are just now up in the air and fifty four miles out …going at one hundred and forty
five mph… the trucks are three miles out at fifty five mph.”
“Steven, got it?”
“Yes, Wilson.”
I took off for the roof with Steven who was pretty well filled in by listening in on the phone call. Marty was on the roof with Chels when I got there, she had filled him in on the three trucks.
“We also have Rachel and Meea on the beach with three gun boats coming in.” I informed Marty and Chels. Chels gave me a worried look, her forehead squeezed tight with worry.
“Its okay, I believe I know what Meea has in mind and they should be fine.” I tried to say that to comfort Chels as well as myself, I think.
We loaded the two shotguns and the submachine gun. I gave one of the shotguns to Steven and sent him to the back of the roof to watch our backs. It was now a great time to expand my scope of trust in Steven. I figured his reflexes would be the slowest out of all of us, so if he ended up needing to shoot, he would have more luck with the shotgun.
Since I have never seen Marty or Chels shoot anything, I gave the other shotgun to Chels, being prejudice that guys can shoot better than girls. With her altered vision who knows, she might be a marksman. But, for now I want her safe, so I give her the gun with the biggest margin for error. The military shot guns would bring a man down even if your aim were off quite a bit. I gave Marty the machine gun, and sent him over to the roof of the garage. If nothing else, they would be caught in the crossfire if it came down to a gunfight.
I loaded up the sniper rifle and positioned myself at the peak of the roof using the chimney to steady the rifle. The heat coming up off the roof from the day’s sun was so hot I had to keep wiping my forehead to prevent the sweat from dripping into my eyes.
“Steven, ETA on the trucks?”
“One minute forty five seconds.”
“What’s the ETA on the helicopters now?”
“Two minutes fifteen seconds.”
I sighted down through the scope and focused in on a spot down the road where the trucks would have to slow down.
“Chels, can you tell how your sister is doing?”
“Let me check.”
“Anything?”
“Sheesh… give me a second…yeah! Rachel said Meea’s amazing, and they’re safe!”
“Tell them to head down the beach and to stay with Stacy. I don’t want them to move until we come for them.”
“The trucks are here,” Marty yelled.
I could just see the first truck as it came down our road. It was setting low to the ground fully loaded with men that were here to kill us.
Marty yelled over, “I don’t see any helicopters!”
I aimed at the driver in the lead truck as he came into range just down the road from the house. If I could stop that lead truck, the trucks behind him may hesitate before trying to go around. That might buy us some time until the helicopters arrived.
I squeezed the trigger… a clean shot. The driver lost the top half of his skull, and the truck ground to a stop right away. The other man in the front didn’t think quite fast enough as I dropped him inside the cab before he understood the need to duck and cover. With two shots ripping through the cab the men in the back of the truck started jumping out in every direction.
If we would have had a bazooka it would have helped, but I can understand why Dr. Ishmail may have been reluctant to put that in our hands, being we have only been out of high school a few months.
“Helicopters at 3:00 o’clock!” Chels yelled.
They were coming in hot and had spotted the nice target I left stranded in the middle of the road for them. One… two… missiles away. The back two trucks were incinerated before anyone had the chance to jump out. The second helicopter passed sending a missile into the lead truck I had hit. It exploded… a direct hit… but some of the men that had jumped out were far enough away that the blast didn’t take them out.
Marty let loose with a spray of bullet fire from the garage roof. Chels started to pump rounds out into the yard where a few attackers were now caught up in our crossfire. Marty’s machine gun took off again letting a river of shell casings fall from the roof onto the driveway.
I scanned the neighboring yards for anyone trying to escape rather than attack. I dropped one of them climbing into a car at the house across the street. It was easy to distinguish who the men were since they all wore the same uniforms. A few shots fired from the bushes at the edge of the yard back in our direction and then a few more toward Marty. Chels had reloaded and started firing down toward the bushes from where the shots originated. The bushes were completely shredded and were now colored bright red from blood. I dropped two more men as they were trying to make their way up onto the roof of a near by horse barn.
Then a shot from behind us… we all spun to see Steven looking down by the pool, as smoke rolled from the barrel of his gun. Marty waved over to us that it was OK. He could see by the pool that Steven had taken care of one of the men that slipped by us.
I was sure the gunfire could be heard for miles down the beach. I was glad the girls were safe, but I knew if they heard all this shooting they would be going out of their minds with worry. I was glad though that Melissa, Stacy and Meea were spared this graphic sight close up.
The bluish smoke from all the gunfire was slowly starting to rise into the air. It contrasted with the black smoke billowing from the three trucks in the road. The smell from the burning bodies inside the trucks was stronger than I would have imagined possible.
FBI trucks were now pulling up, and black unmarked cars with wild flashing lights were surrounding the carnage in the road.
“Steven, can I have the gun now please?” He handed it right over to me.
“No problemo,” his head slightly nodded up and down like he knew that was funny.
I spoke back to him in Arnold Schwartenegers voice, “Asta-lavesta, Baby.” Steven actually smiled. An actual smile that I swear was his, from him and not a mimicked smile. He nodded his head again.
“Hey, Wilson.” Marty called from the front of the garage where he had jumped down.
“Are you OK, Marty?” I yelled.
“Yeah, but your not gonna be when Mr. Conner sees this.”
There were five big bullet holes in the garage door. “Awe, yeah, he’ll hate that.”
Marty laughed as he lifted up the garage door, “Hell, that’s nothing, look in the garage.”
There sat Mr. Conner’s 1974 mint condition Jag with five matching bullet holes going through the trunk.
“He’s going to kill me….”
Chels walked up feeling the holes in the trunk of the jag with her fingers, “And I’m real sorry about those bushes out front to Wilson, maybe Mrs. Conner can huh….” We all laughed as the FBI agents running around looked at us as if we were nuts.
“Chels, check on Tony and make sure he’s OK. Marty and I will head down the beach to pick up your sister, and the rest of the group. Also can you keep an eye on Steven?”
“Sure, hurry back.”
Stacy and Melissa had found a hiding place in a high tide large overflow pipe that was dug in off the beach leading to a cavern of sewer tunnels. Meea, with the help of a few pelicans knew we were coming down the beach to get them. Stacy, Melissa and Rachel were waving at us as they made their way out of the pipe behind Meea. When I reached Meea I picked her up off her feet and I held her so tight I could feel her heart beating. She pushed back just enough to get her mouth around mine as Stacy zoomed past us to get to Marty.
Melissa was awake now walking with Rachel, who was purposefully taking her time in order for Melissa not to see too much of our passionate, I’m glad your still alive, reunion.
“I can see my sister’s voice, she say’s she fine. Well Wilson, is she, or is she just trying to spare me from something? We heard all the gun fire and explosions you know!”
“She’s great, Rachel, we’re all just fine, I promise. How about you four?”
“I’m hunnry, Wison.” Me
lissa said rubbing her eyes trying to stay awake.
“Oh, you’re hungry. Didn’t these mean girls feed you?”
“Noooo!” I scooped Melissa up in my arms. Zip, right to her favorite spot on my hip she went, and then her head rested on my chest as she sighed deeply. Melissa was asleep in my arms by the time we reached the house.
“Rachel, I’ll tuck her in bed and we can have a de-briefing with Dr. Ishmail in the kitchen. Will you make sure everyone knows please?”
“Yeah, I’ll get everyone, do you want anything else?”
“Better call for some pizza, I plan to have everyone work through the night.”