Last Stand (The Survivalist Book 7) (19 page)

Tanner squatted down and turned to Samantha, putting a finger to his lips. She quickly knelt beside him, her eyes locking onto the men. Both were soldiers, and both had rifles slung across their backs. They were about fifty yards away, standing with their backs turned while studying the wall of the Metro tunnel.

“What are they doing?” she whispered.

“Don’t know.”

One of the soldiers turned slightly, and they could see that he was holding a small spool of electrical wire. He backed onto the landing, carefully stretching the wire out. Surprisingly, he didn’t attach it to an initiator. Instead, he wrapped it around the leg of a chair and proceeded with the other man down the Metro tunnel. Within seconds, they had disappeared from sight.

“They’re planning to blow up the tunnel,” she said.

“Not if I can help it.”

Tanner stood up and began maneuvering his way through the food court. There was so much debris littering the floor that it was impossible to go much faster than a shuffle without tripping. Even so, he leaped over garbage cans and ducked between overturned tables as fast as his frame allowed. Samantha followed behind, marveling at his agility. Big or not, Tanner Raines could move.

They reached the mouth of the Metro tunnel and discovered that the soldiers had rigged three charges, all daisy-chained together using blasting caps and electrical wire. Each block of C4 was roughly the size and shape of a few bars of soap placed end to end. Two of the charges had been stuck to opposing walls, and the last one was on the ceiling overhead.

“How do we keep them from exploding?” said Samantha.

Before Tanner could answer, a loud boom sounded from further down the tunnel. A cloud of dust puffed out to lightly coat their hair and clothes.

“We’re too late!” she exclaimed.

Footsteps sounded from the tunnel, and Tanner waved her back.

“Quick, find cover.”

The only things close enough to hide behind were two garbage bins spaced about twenty feet apart. Tanner ducked behind the closest one, and Samantha hurried behind the one further up the platform.

It didn’t take long for the soldiers to reappear.

“Sergeant Merkel, I swear to God, you couldn’t blow up a straw hut if you had fifty sticks of dynamite and a barrel of nitroglycerine.”

“It’s not my fault, Cap’n. It’s these damned tunnel walls. They must be reinforced with rebar. I’ll add a few more charges and seal this baby tighter than granny’s pucker hole.”

The captain shook his head. “Just get it right this time.”

Tanner stepped out from behind the garbage can and raced toward them with his shotgun raised.

“Hands!” he shouted. “Let me see ‘em!”

Both men instinctively reached for their rifles, but upon seeing the open end of the twelve-gauge, quickly changed their minds.

“Easy, friend,” the sergeant said, slowly raising his hands. “No need for violence.”

Tanner closed to within a few paces and read the names on their uniforms, Merkel and Prince.

“Believe me, you don’t want to do this,” said Captain Prince. “If you hurt us, there’ll be a platoon of soldiers down here within the hour.”

“A platoon you say?”

Prince didn’t bother trying to sell it. There was really no coming back from a piss-poor bluff.

“One at a time, slip the rifles over your head and toss them away.” Tanner leveled the shotgun at Merkel. “You first, Sergeant.”

Merkel lifted the M4 over his head and lobbed it down the tunnel.

Tanner shifted the shotgun toward Prince.

“Now you, Captain.”

“You’re making a mistake. We’re trying to seal this tunnel to keep the infected from getting out.”

“No, we understand,” Samantha said, stepping out from behind the other trash can. “Unfortunately, we need to go down there.”

Both soldiers seemed surprised, perhaps because a twelve-year-old girl had suddenly appeared, or maybe it was because she was holding a rifle on them.

Prince turned to Tanner. “If you go down there, they’ll kill you.” He looked back at Samantha. “Her too.”

“The rifle,” Tanner repeated, watching the man’s hands.

Captain Prince slowly lifted the rifle over his head.

“You want it? Here!” He shoved the weapon toward Tanner with both hands.

Tanner saw the weapon flying toward him, but there was little he could do to get out of its way. He had a choice to make and only an instant in which to make it. Should he pull the trigger, or did he let the situation potentially get away from him? The men certainly had not brought malice to him. If anything, it was the other way around. The confrontation was arguably done out of necessity, but that didn’t make it any easier to justify killing or crippling them. In the end, he chose to do nothing.

The weapon bounced off his chest, and both soldiers charged as he knew they would.

“Tanner!” shouted Samantha, swinging up her rifle. Even if she had wanted to shoot, it would have been impossible. He was directly in her line of fire.

Tanner dropped the shotgun behind him.

“Stay back, Sam. I’ve got this.”

At a buck seventy a piece, Prince and Merkel weren’t particularly big men, but they weren’t featherweights either. If it came down to a contest of mass, Tanner was going to lose. The biggest mistake anyone made when fighting two men was to worry about both men at the same time. In Tanner’s experience, it was better to focus on the biggest or meanest sonofabitch first. Once that one went down, attention could then shift to the next, and so on. The logic behind it wasn’t foolproof, of course. The weaker man could always end the fight with a baseball bat to the back of the head. But more often than not, the timid fighter took longer to do something really nasty.

It was along that line of thinking that led Tanner to charge headfirst into Captain Prince. The headbutt drilled the man squarely in the chest, not only stopping his advance, but also knocking the wind out of him. Before he could recover, Tanner twisted up and to the left, firing an uppercut all the way from down by his hip. The blow caught Prince along his left mandible, rocking his head back as blood and chips of teeth shot from his mouth.

Merkel tried to engage by stepping around and grabbing Tanner from behind, first by the shoulders, and when that failed, from around his neck. Trying to buy time, Tanner reared back, catching Merkel in the nose with the back of his head. The sergeant released the choke and stumbled away, cupping his nose as blood spilled from between his fingers.

Captain Prince cocked back to throw a haymaker, and when he did, Tanner lunged forward with both arms bent at ninety degrees. His forearms struck the inside of Prince’s biceps, preventing him from delivering the punch. The captain tried to hit him anyway, but it was like trying to punch around a hotdog stand.

Before Prince could figure out how to get around the roadblock, Tanner reached up, grabbed two handfuls of hair, and pulled his face down into a knee strike. The first blow caught Prince in the eye, and he desperately grabbed Tanner’s leg with hopes of tackling him. But stopping a series of knee strikes is like trying to rein in an out-of-control jackhammer. It can be done, perhaps, but not before it wears you out. Blow after blow smashed into his face, and within a few seconds, he was out cold.

Tanner dropped him and spun around with fists raised.

Sergeant Merkel stood ten feet away, his arm securely braced across Samantha’s throat.

For her part, Samantha seemed to be doing okay. There was more frustration in her eyes than fear. She’d been in worse scrapes. One of her hands was tugging at his forearm, and the other was twisted around, sandwiched between her back and the soldier.

“All right, asswipe, you’re going to do exactly what I say. And if you don’t, I’m gonna break this li’l lady’s neck.”

Tanner stood up straight and took a deep breath. The shotgun and the soldiers’ M4s were scattered about, but none were close enough to reach.

“What do you want?”

“Let’s start with my rifle. After that, we’ll see.”

“I’m just a kid,” choked Samantha. “You should let me go.”

“Nice try,” he said, squeezing a little tighter. Her face was starting to turn red. “I’m the one giving orders, and right now—”

Merkel’s declaration of authority gave way to an agonizing scream, as he shoved Samantha away. She stumbled forward and turned to face him. In her hand, she held the hunting knife that she kept in the sheath at the small of her back, the edge of the blade slick with blood.

“You little bitch,” he whined, pressing his hands to a gash on his right thigh.

Without warning, Tanner stepped forward and punched Merkel in the face. The blow was as powerful as it was unexpected, and the sergeant fell back across the tunnel tracks, his head flopping backwards to smack the metal rail. He made no move to get back up, and based on the pool of blood forming around his head, he wouldn’t be any time soon.

Tanner glanced over at Samantha as if waiting for her to say something.

“What?” she said, wiping the knife on the cuff of her shirt. “I asked him nicely.”

“You most certainly did.”

“And it wasn’t like I stabbed him.”

“Barely a scratch.”

“Exactly.” She walked over and nudged Merkel with her boot. “What do we do with them now? We can’t just leave them here.”

“Why not?”

“They might sneak up behind us.”

“Darlin’, where we’re headed, no one’s going to follow. My guess is that once they wake up, they’ll head back to basecamp for medical care.”

She looked over at one of the explosives on the wall.

“We should at least get rid of the bombs. If they set them off, we could be trapped down there forever.”

“Agreed.”

Tanner stepped closer and inspected the closest block of explosives. While far from being a demolitions expert, he recalled Mason saying that C4 was safe to handle. Of course, what that meant exactly was anyone’s guess. He held his breath and gently peeled the block from the wall.

It came free without blowing them into next week.

“Good job,” Samantha said, keeping what she hoped was a safe distance.

Next, he carefully wriggled out the blasting cap, which in this case was a small metal tube about the size of a cigarette. He repeated the process for the block on the far wall. When he was finished, he turned and saw Samantha staring up at the block on the ceiling.

“How do you suppose they got that one up there?”

“One of them probably stood on the other’s shoulders.”

“Do you want me to—”

Before she could finish, he tugged on the wire, doing a bit of a dance to catch the blasting cap as it fell from the ceiling.

“That should do it.”

Samantha continued to stare up at the C4.

“But what if they figure out a way to set it off?”

“Even if they do, that one charge won’t be enough to collapse the tunnel.”

“How do you know?”

“Call it an educated guess by a fellow bomb maker.”

“And how much education do you have?”

“I finished middle school. Does that count?”

“Hmm,” she said, looking around. “I bet there’s a ladder around here somewhere.”

“Don’t bother.” Tanner walked back to Captain Prince, propped his leg on the Metro rail, and stomped. Prince didn’t scream, but there was the unmistakable crunch of bone and cartilage as the knee gave way. “There,” he said, turning to Samantha, “now no one goes up a ladder.”

She stared at him with wide eyes.

“What?” he said.

“Nothing.”

“It was barely a break.”

“More like a fracture.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay,” she said with a shrug. “Are we ready to go?”

“First, we search them.” Tanner knelt down and frisked Captain Prince. He found dog tags, a pouch of chewing tobacco, and a flashlight. He took the flashlight, figuring that where they were headed, one could never have too many.

Samantha followed his lead and searched Sergeant Merkel.

“He’s got a bag of some sort,” she said, holding up a large green satchel. She tilted it so that he could read the words.
Charge Assembly, Demolition, M-183
. “It must be more bombs.”

Tanner came over and carefully inspected the contents. There was an M32 blasting machine and three blocks of C4. Like the ones stuck to the wall, each block was wrapped in an olive Mylar film with pressure-sensitive adhesive tape on its surface. He gently inserted the two blocks taken from the walls as well as the blasting caps and electrical wire.

Samantha watched as he stood up and slung the satchel over his shoulder.

“You’re taking that with us?”

“Of course. It might come in handy.”

“But it’s dangerous.
Really
dangerous.”

“Which makes it really useful. Besides, I’ve blown things up before,” he said, referring to a makeshift fertilizer bomb he had used to dislodge a group of renegade soldiers.

“True, but you had the help of a very smart chemistry professor.”

“Don’t need him this time.”

“Why not?”

“Because, darlin’,” he said, patting the satchel, “this time I’ve got real explosives.”

“Yeah,” she mumbled, “that’s what I’m afraid of.”