Last Stand (The Survivalist Book 7) (30 page)

“Join the club.”

She held up one of the pointy shafts and shook her head.

“We’re going to need more than these to stop them.”

Rodriguez turned and studied the store. A few ideas came to mind, none of which were going to make much of a difference. Still, it was like she said—they had to do something.

“I’ll continue to break these off.” He pointed to a wall lined with dozens of boxes of golf balls. “You go over and dump as many of those golf balls on the floor as you can find.”

“Golf balls?”

“Sure. Maybe, it’ll slow them down.”

“Right!” she said with much more enthusiasm than the suggestion deserved. She reached out and touched his hand. “Thank you—you know, for not giving up.”

“I get it, Lieutenant. Now go play with my balls.”

She started toward the rack and then turned to look back.

“What did you just say?”

“I said go pour out the golf balls. Really, Lieutenant.”

She shook her head, a nervous smile creeping over her face. No two people could be more different, but like it or not, they were in this together.

They took five long minutes getting the store ready, keeping a constant eye on the stairs. When they had finished, there were twenty homemade golf spears poking out of nooks and crannies, and a few hundred Titleist golf balls rolling about the floor. They also hung shirts, hats, and ponchos around the store, hoping that they might confuse the soldiers, even if only for an instant.

When they were done, Rodriguez pulled off his bloody clothes and slipped on a pair of golf pants and a matching Polo shirt and hat.

“Do you really think this is the time to be worried about your clothes?” she said, kneeling behind the counter.

“It’s camouflage.” He hesitated. “Maybe you should change your clothes too, Lieutenant.”

She gave him the eye. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

He grinned. “Hey, I’m just looking out for you.”

“Uh-huh, sure you are. I’m fine like I am.”

“Suit yourself, but that pink t-shirt would look awesome on you.”

“Corporal…” she growled.

Rodriguez laughed and repositioned himself to the far corner of the room to hide behind a stack of golf bags that he had stuffed with everything solid he could find. It wasn’t quite a machine gunner’s nest, but it was better than being out in the open.

Bell whistled and pointed toward the stairs. Shapeless shadows crept lower.

Rodriguez nodded, lowering his face to the stock of his Grendel.

Unfortunately, neither Bell nor Rodriguez had a clean shot at the landing, essentially giving the soldiers a free pass up to that point. The Black Dogs made no attempt to talk them out. Instead, they tossed a small canister through the broken glass door. It landed near the center of the room, emitting a tremendous boom and flash of light.

Rodriguez and Bell both covered their ears and ducked away from the blast, but that only help to limit the worst of it. As their senses were overwhelmed, the world morphed into a bright, silent orb of confusion.

Chappie watched from the open cargo door of his UH-60 as the two SpeedHawks raced away, white smoke streaming from their underbellies. Two dozen Blackhawks now circled the golf course, and smoke rose in the distance from where one had detected and subsequently destroyed the remaining Chinook. Dr. Green and Congresswoman Lemay sat on jump seats to either side of the door. Both stared out, gripping the harnesses strapped tightly across their chests.

Chappie’s radio sounded. “Sir, both aircraft are fleeing to the east. Should we continue to fire on them?”

“Let ’em go.” The mission was to rescue President Glass, not wipe out the Black Dogs. Not yet, anyway.

“Who are they?” shouted Lemay.

“They’re a special unit sent by your lovely Commander in Chief.”

“But why would President Pike do that? It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Not yet perhaps, but it will. I suspect you’re about to have your eyes opened, Congresswoman.”

A tremendous flash lit the windows of the clubhouse below them, followed almost immediately by the sound of gunfire. There was a firefight underway.

Green pointed out the open door. “General, could that be President Glass and the others?”

“I don’t know why they’d have left the bunker, but somebody’s obviously putting up a fight.” He brought his radio up. “Get a squad down into the clubhouse. And be on the alert for friendlies.”

Three of the Blackhawks quickly descended. Before their wheels could even touch down, soldiers were scrambling out the cargo doors.

Their responses to the flashbang grenade couldn’t have been more different. Rodriguez poked his rifle above the golf bags and began firing blindly toward the door. Bell chose to drop to the floor, lying motionless with the hope of avoiding detection until her senses had returned. Of the two, Bell’s choice had the better outcome. Rodriguez quickly found himself under intense fire, bullets ripping into the bags. One found its way around the makeshift barricade, punching a neat hole through his thigh. He screamed and scrambled further around the bags, hoping to avoid the painful slap of another bullet.

Dozens of rounds continued pelting the bags, but thankfully, none had found their way through the thick piles of clubs, push carts, and training aids. Afraid to show any part of himself, Rodriguez sat balled up, his rifle clutched to his chest with one hand, and the bloody rag pressed to his eye with the other.

Bell watched as two of the Black Dogs carefully crept toward Rodriguez’s position, darting from one table to the next. They were seconds away from having a clean shot.

She took a long slow breath.

“I’m okay with dying,” she whispered. “I hope you are too.”

She sighted in on the lead man and fired. The 6.5 mm slug caught him in the side of his neck, and he toppled over, clutching the wound, coughing and gurgling. She immediately swung back toward the other man, but before she could get off a shot, he dropped prone and let loose with automatic fire.

Bullets punched holes all around her, shattering the glass counter and sending hats and towels tumbling from the shelf above her head. She waited for the sting of a bullet, but it didn’t come. Instead, two more thunderous booms shook the room. Completely unprepared for the flashbang grenades, she lay back, blinded and disoriented. She vomited but managed to swallow it back down. Loud gunshots rang out, as well as voices that she couldn’t make out. She lay on the floor, unable to fight back. This was it. The end. Oh well, she thought, I had to go sometime. At least it was with some honor.

More gunshots sounded, some of them silenced and some of them not. Strangely, none of it seemed directed at her. The entire commotion lasted less than a minute, and when it finally subsided, she opened her eyes. A man stood towering over her, dressed in military fatigues, body armor, and a tight-fitting cap.

He extended a gloved hand.

“U.S. Marines, ma’am. We’re here to help.”

By the time Chappie’s helicopter had landed, the fight in the clubhouse was already over. Ten marines surrounded a young man and woman, barely out of their teens. The man was dressed in bright golf clothes and the woman in an Army cadet uniform. Both were clearly shell-shocked from the intense firefight, but the man had clearly taken the brunt of the punishment.

Chappie, Dr. Green, and Congresswoman Lemay hurried over to the cadets. Lieutenant Bell immediately saluted, and Chappie returned the gesture.

“You two are lucky to be alive.”

“Barely,” Rodriguez said, sitting down, one hand pressed against his leg and the other to the rag over his eye.

“Hold on, son. Help’s on the way.”

Seconds later, a medic raced up with a bright red bag and began to cut away Rodriguez’s bloody pant leg.

Once Chappie was sure that the cadet was in good hands, he turned to Bell.

“Lieutenant, can you tell me what’s going on here?”

“Yes, sir. The soldiers came to kill President Glass. Corporal Rodriguez and I were trying to stop them.”

Dr. Green stepped closer. “Where is she? Where’s President Glass?”

Bell pointed to the sloping driveway leading up to the West Tunnel Entrance.

“She must still be inside the bunker.”

“Please tell me that the soldiers didn’t manage to get the door open.”

Bell’s face grew long. “I’m sorry, ma’am. We did what we could, but there were so many of them.”

Green covered her mouth. “Then it’s over. The President’s dead.”

“Maybe not,” Rodriguez said, grimacing as the medic applied a hemastatic bandage to his leg.

Green seemed confused. “I don’t understand. How could she possibly fend them off?”

“She couldn’t. But, thankfully, she’s not alone.”

“Who’s with her?”

“Only the meanest lawman you’ll ever meet.”

“A lawman?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Rodriguez looked off toward the blast door. “To get to President Glass, those men will have to get by Marshal Raines. And that’s not a job I’d wish on anyone.”

Chapter 19  

Mason, General Carr, and Bowie continued to act as scouts for the rest of the group with the hopes of clearing any resistance. Twice, they crossed paths with the Black Dogs, and both times they managed to avoid detection. It was a high-stakes game of hide-and-go-seek that wasn’t going to end with someone being called out.

As they drew closer to their destination, Mason called everyone back together. They huddled in a small storage room, looking down a long hallway lined with doors on either side. At the end stood the East Entrance blast door, still securely closed.

“The decontamination chamber is through the last door on the left,” he said, pointing.

“We should open the blast door before we go down into the sewers,” said Pinker. “It might fool them into thinking that we went outside.”

“Agreed.” Mason looked left and right. It was clear. “Let’s move!”

The group hurried into the corridor, warily eyeing the closed doors and vacant hallway. Without saying the words, everyone was wondering the same thing. Exactly how long could their luck hold out? They had just arrived at the bunker door when that question was finally answered by the steady thumping of boots coming from behind them.