The Sharps Unleashed, page 14
“Did anyone die?”
“Not that we’re aware of. There is a team there assessing the situation and sweeping to make sure no undetonated bombs remain.”
“David, that van we saw is on its way to Chamberlain. They’re counting on the town to be evacuated and then they’ll blow up Chamberlain. The guy we interrogated said it’s enough to kill thousands to tens of thousands.”
“Hodgins is alerting Chamberlain and Highway Patrol. All military personnel within two-hundred miles are being deployed to the area, so we’ll have a lot of hands soon. We have already shut the area down and the state is under a state of emergency with only authorized personnel allowed on the roads. What else did you learn from this guy?”
“Sounds like the ranks are comprised of ex and current military and law enforcement who are angry about how they’re treated. There seems to be a hierarchy and not everyone knows who’s in command. The guy said it’s a man, and he has a lot of money and is highly connected. Look into any higher government officials or military leaders who may have recently lost elections, were fired, or forced to resign. ”
A loud explosion only about a mile away rocks the ground. All of them crouch down with their weapons drawn and look around.
“Sharp? Was that a bomb?”
“Yeah, close by. We need to go check it out. They may be trying to remove the obstruction Robin and I laid so they couldn’t get out.”
“I’ll stay on the line with you.”
All of them jump into the Hummer , and while Grace drives, Robin reloads their magazines to be prepared for a gun fight.
“Shit. Sharp. Something is jamming the satellites and GPS isn’t working. Your invasion team can’t find you.”
“David, come on! Give us a goddamn break here!”
“I’m sorry, partner. Someone is going to have to lead them in. They’re at a junction way at Halverson, Little Neck, and an unmarked narrow dirt road.”
“They need to take Halverson, to Groton, to Gray Back Park. I can meet them there. They’ll find a couple abandoned police cruisers, a shot up truck, a body, and a wounded man in a cruiser.”
“Ok. Don’t disconnect. I don’t know what we might lose next.”
“Ok.”
Grace comes to a stop, as Robin holds up a hand. She’s looking through the surveillance camera and releases a deep sigh.
“Ok, if you’re going to have a chance to go back to lead our troops in, we need to go on foot the rest of the way. There’s at least a dozen guys working to clear the road.”
Grace takes her ear piece off for some privacy from her partner sitting on the other line and pulls Robin into a passionate kiss for several moments .
As she releases her wife’s mouth, Grace whispers in Robin’s ear, “I love you to the moon and back, and if you don’t see me tonight, find me in the stars.” Robin kisses her cheek, and whispers, “Forever and always, two hearts united. I love you.”
Grace gives her another kiss on the lips, they tell each other to be careful, and then Robin and the captain and three officers jump out of the Hummer .
Chapter Nineteen
Robin creeps forward, watching the placement of her feet to avoid snapping branches or pinecones. She gets positioned behind a fat pine tree that completely obscures her from the men trying to remove the chunks of tree and rock they blew up a few minutes ago. There are four men lifting by hand, a man working a backhoe to remove larger chunks, and ten men standing guard, but are mostly just watching the four men struggle.
“Put your back into it, Dougie!” The men laugh and the man Robin presumes to be “Dougie” throws a chunk of wood at his mocking comrade. “Fuck off, Jackson.”
“All of you shut up and get to work.”
“Who the fuck made you boss?”
“I did. What you going to do about it?”
A tall broad man puffs his chest out and gets in the face of another man. Jackson shoots the tall man in the temple and then dramatically blows on the barrel of his gun.
“Make no mistake, assholes, I’m in charge. Get to work. We need to go find those piece of shit Higgins brothers for blocking our road like this. Then we need to get out of here before they get wise to us. We been blowing up the whole damn town. It’s only a matter of time before they find us. ”
“If you’re so concerned, then fucking do something instead of standing around.”
“Are you disobeying a direct order, Dougie? Do you want to end up like this sack of shit?”
“Fuck off, Jackson. You don’t scare me.”
Jackson walks forward, and as he’s aiming his pistol at Doug’s head, the shorter man blocks his arm and punches him in the jaw. As the two men begin to grapple, a couple more get in on the fight, trying to pull them off of each other while the others stand around cheering them on and laughing.
Robin makes sure her silencer is screwed on her pistol, and she takes aim. She takes out the driver of the backhoe first, since no one is paying attention to him. Then she takes out a couple of guys leaning against it, just behind the larger group. As she takes out the first in the group, the men realize something is going on. Robin takes another shot, quickly reloads with a fresh magazine, and quickly pops off five more before they even have time to fully register the situation and do anything about it. Two men start running away from the scene, but Robin loads a fresh magazine and gets both of them in the back. She waits and watches. She counted fifteen but has only taken out twelve. With her twelve and the man Jackson killed, that’s only thirteen.
She waits five whole minutes before the men step out from behind the other side of a truck. They have their rifles up and are scoping the woods trying to find her. As soon as they turn their backs to her, she takes the shots, hitting both in the back of the head.
Robin pulls out her surveillance camera and looks around. She counts fourteen bodies lying on the ground and one in the backhoe.
Being quiet, just in case some of the warm blobs on her thermal imaging are blending together, Robin creeps forward. She does a full sweep of the area, but doesn’t see anyone else, so she waves her team forward.
“Damn, Sharp.”
Sandra looks around at the dead men with an impressed and disgusted look on her face. Robin doesn’t respond, and just picks up an AR-15 rifle. She checks the magazine to see how many rounds are in it, and then scavenges for more magazines.
“Grab another firearm if you can. You’re probably going to need it.”
All of them share a look of dread and start picking out extra weapons. Dobrowsky stands up from checking a man’s pulse and dusts his knees off.
“They’re all dead. I guess we’re not asking anyone to surrender?”
“We’re vastly outnumbered and they’re armed with bombs they want to use on civilians. We can’t afford to give them that chance. Not at this point, anyway. Let’s go.”
Robin leads them back into the woods, and they stay about fifteen yards off of the road walking parallel to it.
They walk for a mile before they hear the sound of tires coming down the road. They crouch down behind trees and watch as a pickup truck slowly comes down the road. It has two men in the cabin and two men standing in the bed with rifles. As they pass, Robin quickly takes out the two men standing in the bed of the truck. As they fall out and onto the dirt road, the truck brakes hard. The passenger gets out and runs to inspect one of the bodies.
“He’s been shot!”
The truck quickly reverses, running over one of the dead men. As the driver’s side comes into her range, Robin takes a shot, hitting him in the neck. He falls forward, and the truck crashes into a tree perpendicular to the road, creating a roadblock. Robin takes out the other man, and then they move in to make sure they’re all dead, which they are.
“I need to reload. Stand guard.”
Robin leads them back into the woods, and crouches down to reload her pistol magazines.
Eric kneels down with her to help, and says, “Hey, uh, shouldn’t we have seen some army guys by now?”
“They might be lost. GPS is being scrambled.”
“What if…?”
“Focus on the mission. Don’t count on backup. We have to get this done. When Grace and I scouted, we counted at least a hundred men. I just took down nineteen. If we can keep chipping away at them like this, we can do this on our own. You got your head right?”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
“Good, let’s go.”
They press forward, and only get half of a mile before Captain Dobrowsky slumps against a tree, panting for air.
“I need a break. I need water.”
Robin pulls her backpack off and hands out eight-ounce metallic pouches of water to all of them. She pulls out protein bars and offers them as well, which all of them take. They eat the bars and drink the water quickly while keeping an eye on the road and woods.
“Can I take a pee break?”
“Yeah, we should all do that. Men, twenty yards in that direction. Sandra, we’ll go this direction. Watch each other’s backs.”
While Sandra squats down behind a tree with a wad of tissue Robin gave her, Sandra whispers, “Robin?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve never killed a person. What if I can’t take the shot? ”
Robin’s jaw tenses as she tries to control her feeling of frustration and the realization of how badly outnumbered she is. Her team is untrained for this sort of mission and will likely be liabilities and not a benefit.
“You do what you can. Just remember, your team and the civilians of the town are counting on you. If you can’t get a shot off, and we survive this, please consider a new career.”
Sandra stands up buttoning her pants and gives Robin a look of regret and sadness.
“I’ll do my best. I’m sorry I didn’t say something before. I didn’t think we’d be doing this.”
“Me either, but we’re just going to have to do what we have to do.”
Robin gives Sandra’s shoulder an encouraging squeeze, and then they regroup with the men to continue forward.
They walk down the mountain for another mile before the road begins to widen, indicating they’re very close to the cleared plot with the saw mill. Robin holds up a hand and checks the woods with her camera. There are two men stationed fifty yards in front of them on either side of the road, with at least a dozen men moving around about seventy yards away. She scans further to the side of the plot, trying to find a different way onto the property. Only thirty yards from the sentries on the road are additional men on the edge of the woods, but they’re much further from the other men.
Robin waves them forward, and leads them further into the woods, away from the dirt road. She has them stop forty yards in, and she moves in quietly to get closer to the edge of the woods. She scans the property to see if anyone is paying attention to the sentry only five yards in front of her, and since no one seems to be looking, she creeps forward. She shoots the man at the base of his skull, killing him instantly, and quickly reaches around the tree to catch him so he doesn’t fall and cause alarm. She pulls him into the woods, and then lays him down, covering him with some loose pine boughs. She scopes out the yard, looking for a way in, but the yard is very heavily guarded with men stationed every thirty to forty yards along the edge of the woods.
She motions to her team to stay put, and she moves further down the yard to take out the next sentry. She gets the man hidden, and then quickly, but quietly goes back to her team.
She crouches down with them, and whispers, “We’re going to need to keep working the circle. We need to take out all of the guards in the yard before we can move in, otherwise we’ll be seen for sure. There’s nothing to hide behind once we step out of the woods, not till we’re within close range of the mill.”
“Should we just wait here?” Robin shakes her head at Brandon. “We must stick together. Let’s move before they notice two guards are missing.”
They move quickly, and are very careful with their foot placement, but are much louder than before when they were moving slowly. The noise of yelling, talking, trucks running, and unseen machines running helps to mask the sound of their movement, so no one in the yard even glances at the woods, but continues to watch the work being done in the center of the property.
While they hang back about twenty yards, Robin moves in and stealthily kills and hides ten more guards, till they’ve made a full circle, and are thirty yards from the only two remaining sentries by the road.
“Hey! Clausewitz! What the fuck are your buddies doing? Why aren’t they answering the walkies? ”
“Man, I don’t know. Do I walk around with a fucking crystal ball in my hand? They’re probably sick of your ass. You’ve been riding people all day.”
“Get your ass out there and find out what the hell they’re doing. We need to move this shit today.”
The sentry on their side of the road gives the man the middle finger and motions to the other sentry to follow him. They get on dirt bikes that are propped against trees behind them, and they take off up the road.
Robin moves closer to the edge of the woods with her team following, and she scans the yard, watching the men move around, and tries to map out a plan.
She notices a water tower next to the back of the saw mill, about a hundred yards away, which is too far for her to effectively hit with her pistol. The tower is dripping from a pipe with a chain pull, so she knows it has water in it. There’s a man making a lot of noise banging on a bent truck tire rim, so she decides to take the risk with firing the rifle.
She takes aim for the base of the pipe where it meets the rusty water tower, and times her shot with the man’s hammering. The gunshot causes several men to jump and look around, but as the bracket holding the pipe in place breaks free, and water explodes out of the tower in a fast current, they curse and rush forward to investigate.
“The water tower blew! Hurry before it destroys the bombs! Get those boxes out of there!”
The entire yard clears as the men run towards the tower to move boxes out of the way of the flood of water. Robin waves her team forward, and they sprint across the yard to hide behind a truck. She looks behind them towards the road to make sure the sentries haven’t returned, then motions her team forward .
They get to the side of the mill, pressing their backs to the wall, and then start shuffling forward to try to get inside.
A man walks around the side of the mill unbuttoning his pants and hopping around, like he needs pee. He looks up shocked to see them, and starts to say, “Who are…?”
Robin quickly shoots the man in the underside of his chin with her pistol, and they lay him down along the wall. Robin takes a deep breath, and slowly peeks around the side of the wall for just a moment.
There are several men standing around talking and loading boxes into a truck that’s parked just inside the open barn doors.
She motions to her team to move towards the back of the large barn. They move quickly, staying out of sight of the windows, and keep glancing around, particularly behind themselves, to ensure no one is following or sees them.
Sandra stops at the edge of the barn, and presses her back against the wall, looking at Robin, who is pulling up the rear. Robin moves forward, getting in the lead, and peeks out behind the barn.
About fifteen yards away, there are three guys sitting on a large rock passing a bottle of liquor between each other, taking large swigs, but they’re not talking. Robin grabs a stone off of the ground and tosses it to towards the woods. They look over their shoulder, but then look back at the ground in front of themselves. Robin throws another stone, and one of the men gets up and scratches his head, looking wobbly on his feet. He yawns and slaps one of the guys on the shoulder and nods towards the woods.
“Where’s Jason?”
“Probably taking a piss or jerking off.”
“Should we go check it out?”
“No, give me the bottle. ”
“We need some bitches around here to fuck.”
Sandra’s hand reaches out and grips Robin’s arm. Robin can see the fear in her eyes and it causes her own worry and fear to surface. She gives Sandra’s hand a squeeze, and then tosses another stone.
“Ok, what the hell is that?”
“You’re so fucking paranoid. We’ve been out here for a month and haven’t seen anyone.”
Robin tosses a stone to land about ten yards out in front of herself on their side of the barn, and all three men stand up looking concerned.
“Go check it out.”
“If you’re so sure I’m paranoid, then you go look.”
“Come on, jackass, give me that bottle.”
The man rips the bottle from his buddy’s hand, and the three of them walk out to the side. Robin has her pistol up, and as soon as they come around the side of the barn, she takes three quick shots, dropping them before they have a chance to look to their side and see her. They quickly pull the men to the side of the barn, and Robin reloads her pistol with a fresh magazine. She checks their belts and pulls out three .45 caliber pistols. She ejects the magazines, and Eric and Sandra work quickly to reload Robin’s magazines for her with their ammo.
“Who the fuck is wasting good liquor?”
Robin presses her pistol to her body to muffle the sound of her sliding a magazine into place. Just as the man is bending down next to her to pick up the bottle that’s slowly spilling its contents onto the ground, Robin chambers the gun, and hits the man between the eyes as he looks over at her.
“Oh, shit! Hey!”
Robin turns the corner and takes out two more men. Eric and Brandon rush to her sides with their guns raised, but no one else comes out. Sandra and Dobrowsky drag the men to the side of the barn, and then they press in against the wall again on the backside of the barn.
A whistle blasts from the front of the yard, and they freeze as they’re about to peek around the other side of the barn.
