The Sharps Unleashed, page 15
“Red alert! Red alert!”
They hear men rushing towards the front of the yard, and Robin hazards a glance around the wall. The ground is flooded, and all of the men are splashing through the muddy water to answer the alert.
Robin leans into her team, and very quietly whispers, “We have to avoid this side. It’s wet. We’ll leave prints. We need to get inside.”
They back up several paces, where there is a door in the back of the barn. Robin looks in the window and doesn’t see anyone, so she tries the handle. With her pistol raised, and Eric and Brandon standing with their rifles at the ready, she slowly pushes the door forward. It creaks loudly, so she stops. They press their backs against the walls and just wait to see if anyone comes forward.
“Give me a hit off of that. I want to be high as fuck if we’re about to die.”
A man laughs as he exhales and the smell of skunk rushes out the small gap in the door.
“Here, take two of these pills. I got these off that ranger this morning. Grab a bottle of that bourbon.”
Two thumps hit against the inside of the wall, causing Robin and her team to sway forward from the impact.
“Do you think they really found us, or did those Higgins brothers betray us?”
“I don’t care.” The man laughs in an intoxicate way and then inhales deeply as he takes a drag off of his marijuana cigarette. “We’re all going to die anyway. Probably better we die out here before the Feds find us. I’m not going to prison again. Fuck that shit.”
“How many people you think we killed today?”
“Probably fifty.”
“No, man, it has to be more than that. We blew up that government building too. That’s got to be at least fifty people just right there.”
“Alright, a hundred. Why’d they go blowing up the toll stations? That was pretty fucked up.”
“What does it matter? You ever think that all of this is just an illusion, like we’re not really here, or that we’re like in someone’s imagination or a video game or something?”
The other man laughs hard and shoves his friend, causing the wall to bounce again.
“Man, you’re lit. You like those pills? Give me my shit back. Man, those sheep fuckers grew some good pot. Why’d Jacob kill them? We could use some good pot growers in paradise.”
“Cause man, Cole and Jacob used to be best friends. Didn’t you hear the story?”
“I heard some rumors that they used to be lovers.”
“No way, man, it wasn’t mutual. Those rumors about Leon and Cole being sheep fuckers is real, by the way. So fucking gross. Anyway, when they were in high school, Cole threw a barn party and they got drunk. Long story short, after everyone else left, Cole fucking pinned Jacob down and raped his ass. Leon walked in on it, and after Cole finished, Leon took his turn.”
“Why didn’t he fight back?”
“He was drunk and Cole was way stronger than him. Jacob was never the same after that. That’s why he’s so fucking crazy.”
“How do you know about this? ”
“After Jacob shot them and tossed them in that truck, he got super wasted. A bunch of us were sitting around and he spilled everything. Don’t mention it though. He killed three guys the next day for talking about it.”
“That man is unstable.” The other man laughs hard. “We’re all fucking unstable. We just blew up half the town and plan to blow up more. Stable people don’t blow shit up.”
“That’s true. Fuck it. We’re all crazy. I need to take a piss. Come on. Just don’t rape my ass.”
He laughs and rips the door open. The men walk out staggering, and then stop and turn back looking confused. As they’re about to say something, Robin takes them both down with a fatal shot to their chests.
“The wastoids passed out again. Big surprise.”
A man walks out and kicks one of the men in his leg, and Robin shoots him. They wait a moment, and since they don’t hear anyone else, Brandon and Eric quickly pull the dead men to the side of the building, out of sight of the open doorway.
Robin hazards a glance inside, and doesn’t see anyone, so she leads them in. She checks behind the open door, and then skirts along the wall to hide behind a large stack of crates.
The barn smells of damp rotting wood, cigarette and pot smoke, sweat, liquor, and fertilizer. It’s a horrible combination and causes all of them to scrunch their noses up and cover their faces with the bend of their elbows. There’s not much sound in the barn, except the occasional clanking of metal and men grumbling about being bossed around.
Most of the noise is coming from the front of the barn, outside in the yard where they’re discussing sending men out to find the Higgins brothers, who all of them believe is responsible for the deaths on the main road out of here.
“Well, look what we’ve got here.”
Chapter Twenty
Robin spins around, and as she’s taking aim, she quickly lowers her weapon. A man has snuck up on them and has a hand over Sandra’s mouth and a pistol held to her temple. Her eyes tear up, and she is visibly shaking.
“Drop the weapons. Hey, boys! I caught us some treats!”
Sandra releases a panicked whimper, which snaps Robin into action. She pretends to be kneeling down to set her pistol on the ground, but quickly aims and shoots the man in the thigh. He screams and stumbles backwards, grabbing his thigh, and before he can take aim for Robin, she gets him dead center on the chest. She ejects her empty magazine, loads a full magazine, and spins to take out two more men running towards them.
Several men rush in from all sides, and they’re quickly surrounded by a dozen men pointing guns at them. Robin curses under her breath and puts her hands in the air.
“Hey there buddies!”
Andre walks over, shoving his way through the men surrounding them. He is wearing a cocky smile, but there is fear in his eyes.
“This is seriously the best invasion team you could put together big guy? I’m surprised your old fat ass didn’t die in the woods just trying to get here. ”
Captain Dobrowsky is lightly panting for air, and he’s shaking in fear, but he doesn’t bite at Andre’s bait for a verbal match. Andre just grins and walks closer to Robin. He rips her pistol out of her hand and looks it over.
“A silencer – nice touch.” He looks at the rest of the firearms discarded on the ground and releases a loud laugh. “Damn, Sharp, you took out all of those guys on your own? What’d you bring these clowns for? To have an audience? So, how many more of you are out there?”
“It’s just us. You made a mess in town and no one else could be spared.”
“Yeah? For some reason, I just don’t believe you. Tie them up.”
Several men rush forward and roughly grip their arms. They shove them deeper into the barn and into a side room, where a man, woman, and two children are tied up against a wall. The man and woman have some marks of battery on their faces and arms, and their clothes are dirty.
“You have hostages? Why are they here?”
“Shut up. You don’t get to ask the questions.”
Two men rip her backpack off, pat her down, taking a large fixed blade knife from her belt, and then Robin is roughly shoved down in a straight back wooden chair, which they tie her to. She watches as her team is tied up with ropes and tied to wooden support beams. Andre steps forward and lightly pats her cheek a few times with a happy smile, then he slaps her really hard, causing her head to painfully jerk to the side. As she looks up at him again, he lands a hard punch on the same cheek.
“Leave her alone!”
Robin is surprised the demand comes from the unknown man, and not from her team. Andre just ignores him, and lifts Robin’s head to look at him. He smiles as he brushes the pad of his thumb over her busted bottom lip.
“Now, how many more of you are out there? Who else knows about our location?”
“I saw Tiffany yesterday. She’s really worried about you and that you’ve gotten mixed up in something horrible.”
Andre sneers and slaps her really hard. Robin spits the blood out that’s spilling into her mouth from her busted lip.
“Were you hoping for a girl or a boy?”
“Shut up!”
Andre hits her again across the face and lands a hard punch in her stomach. She coughs for air as the air is knocked out of her.
“Who else knows about our location?”
“Where were you going to take her to settle down? You know, to run away from all of this bullshit you got yourself into.”
He lunges forward gripping her shoulder and presses the blade of a knife to her throat. He looks in her eyes with hatred, but Robin can still see fear in the look.
“Answer my questions, or I’m going to start peeling your skin from your bones.”
“It really is a shame you left that beautiful woman to raise your baby all by herself, especially after becoming a terrorist. I hope she can love your baby after this.”
Andre’s face shows pain and regret for a moment, but then it flares with anger again. He punches her hard in the temple, nearly knocking her out. Before she can recover, he plunges his short pocket knife into her thigh. She tenses her jaw and groans slightly, but she contains the scream of pain that wants to rip through her.
“Scream, you fucking bitch. Scream! I want to hear you scream and cry! ”
He punches her again in the face and stomach, but Robin is able to hold in the screams. He rips the knife out of her thigh and starts cutting her jacket off.
“Get off of her! Leave her alone you pig!”
Another man kicks the male hostage in the head, who is yelling out in Robin’s defense, and he falls unconscious on the ground with his wife and children crying and whimpering in fear.
Andre rips Robin’s jacket off, leaving her in a white tank top, and he presses the blade of his knife to her shoulder. While watching her face, he slowly drags the knife across her skin, shallowly cutting her. She inhales deeply but maintains her composure.
“Fucking bitch.”
He cuts her again, but still doesn’t receive the reaction he wants.
“Your anger is not with me. It doesn’t matter how much you beat on me or cut me up, it’s not going to relieve your anger. You’re just adding to your internal misery. You made a really big mistake that you really regret and you’re stuck with it. Surrender, and your time in prison may be reduced.”
All of the men surrounding them laugh hard.
“Andre, just kill that crazy bitch. She thinks she can ask us to surrender when we have her tied up? She must be on some really good drugs. Can we get some of that shit, baby?”
A man walks over and caresses Robin’s cheek in a lustful way, but Andre grabs him and slits his throat.
“What the…” Andre holds up Robin’s pistol, aiming it at a man who starts to walk towards Andre.
“I won’t stand for that shit. All of you keep your hands off of the women and children. I will kill anyone who touches them. Got it! ”
“Man, fuck you. You’re the one beating on the woman like an abusive husband. I’m getting a drink. This is fucking boring and stupid. You’re not getting anything out of her. She’s obviously been in this situation before.”
All of the men leave, except for three, and when Andre looks back down at Robin, he growls in anger seeing she has a small smile on her face.
“What the fuck are you smiling about? Get her tied up to that pole.”
Two men roughly pull Robin up and use a length of rope to tie her arms behind her back. She grimaces a little from putting weight on her left leg because of her stab wound, but she remains standing.
“I’m going to ask you one more time and you either answer with what you know I want to hear, or you keep your mouth shut. Who else knows about our location?”
“Was the armored truck yours and Jacob’s offering to be able to join this band of losers?”
Andre scowls at her and punches her in the stomach, causing her to bend over coughing for air. As she’s straightening up again, he strikes her across the face with her pistol, knocking her out. Robin crumbles to the ground with her head slumped forward.
Without a word or glance at anyone else, he walks out of the room, shoving her pistol in the waist of his pants.
Chapter Twenty-One
Grace couches down behind the large tire of her Hummer , taking cover from a round of fire coming from the woods.
“The other mill has been secured. They have fifteen men in custody. We’re going to move in. Shoot to kill.”
“Wait, my wife and four police officers are inside.”
The army general holds up a hand to his squad behind him, motioning for them to wait. He gives Grace an understanding moment of pause and nods once.
“You have five minutes. We’ll lead them west to give you an opening.”
“Thank you.”
Grace shuffles around the vehicles in a crouched position and waits for the army to move in the opposite direction. Two smoke bombs are thrown, and the gunfire stops as the men in the woods choke on the smoke. The army moves in, and the gun battle resumes. Grace watches as they push the men further west, then she takes off.
As soon as she enters the wood, a bullet whizzes past her and hits the tree behind her. She takes shelter, then spins and hits a man center mast, and then rushes forward.
She jogs through the rough terrain, leaping over rocks, fallen trees, and skirting around dips and holes in the ground .
She gets within a quarter mile of the saw mill and comes under fire again. She squats down behind a tree and watches how the bullets hit the trees to gauge the direction of her shooters. There’s a pause in the shooting, so Grace aims and takes down two guys. The attack on her resumes, so she takes cover again. She winces in pain as the trunk of the tree takes too many hits and splinters. A large splinter slices through her jacket and pierces her left shoulder. She pulls the wood out of her arm, and then leans out, taking aim for the last two men firing on her. One goes down, and the other retreats, so she takes off in pursuit. He zigzags in and out of trees, and abruptly stops and spins. Grace shoots, and he falls backwards.
Without losing a second to check if he’s dead, she continues forward, reloading a fresh magazine while she continues to run. She gets to the edge of the woods and stops to gauge the best way in past the couple dozen men rushing around the yard packing pickup trucks and SUVs with boxes, firearms, and large steel ammo boxes.
Grace sprints through the woods, keeping to the edge to get to the backside of the barn, where the least activity is. As she’s about to sprint for the building, she quickly steps back behind a tree. Two men carrying rifles come out the back door and look around both sides of the building before resting their backs against the wall outside of the door.
“Damn it.”
Grace curses under her breath and keeps moving to scope out the other side of the barn. The ground is completely saturated and muddy from the water tower spilling its entire contents. As she’s about to go back to the other side, her heart falls out of her chest and rushes further to the front of the barn. There’s a large pile of bodies behind a rotted out shed. She gets as close as she can without going out into the open. She can’t make out every person in the pile, but her anxiety relaxes some. None of them appear to be Robin or the police officers.
She doesn’t see any living bodies along this side of the barn, so she decides to make a break for it. She rushes out of the woods and kneels down next to the pile of bodies to peek out from behind the shed.
“Hurry up with that truck. We need to blow up that damn barricade so we can sneak out the back before the fucking army gets here.”
“If you guys hadn’t stacked the fucking bombs under the goddamn water tower, we’d have the right supplies. I warned you about using stupid fertilizer instead of C4.”
“C4 is traceable. Now, stop complaining and just get it done.”
“Someone is going to have to drive it to get it on course, and then jump out, but I think I got the rigging done. The truck should just plow right into the barricade and the impact will detonate the bombs.”
“Go get Bailey. Let him do it.”
The men disperse, leaving the truck unattended. Grace shuffles forward with her pistol in one hand, and a knife in her other. She looks around, and then quickly rushes forward. She ducks under the truck, and quickly finds the fuel line and brake lines. She cuts through both, and then rushes back to her hiding place behind the shed before the men return.
“Alright, as soon this shit blows, you guys better be close behind with the trucks and backhoe to clear the road so we can get out of here. Peace, brothers, see you on the other side.”
A tall scrawny man jumps into the truck and turns the key. The engine sputters and coughs but dies as the man tries to take off .
“What the hell? John, this thing has no gas! You rigged a truck with an empty tank, you fucking moron!”
“It had a quarter tank when I got in there!”
The men walk around the truck, and as soon as they find the large puddle of gasoline and see the cut fuel line, they holler, “Hey! We got someone inside! Red alert!”
Just as she’s about to move, the barrel of a gun is pressed to the back of her head. She freezes and holds up her hands. A foot kicks her hand, causing her to drop her pistol.
“Get up, and turn around, nice and slow.”
Grace stands and turns to face Andre Brooks. He smiles and holds up Robin’s surveillance camera.
“This is a really fun toy. I found several fun toys on Robin, but this is my favorite. It’s been entertaining watching you scurry around to try to find a way in. Cutting the fuel line was a nice touch, but it won’t stop us. We’ll get out of here before your backup gets here.”
Grace’s heart starts racing and her stomach churns with nausea in concern for Robin. He laughs and grabs her shoulder, forcing her to turn around. While he holds her shoulder, and keeps his gun pointed in her back, he walks her forward.
“I got the Fed’s other dog. Settle down and get back to work so we can get out of here.”
One of the men roughly grabs Grace and shoves her forward, marching her to the front of the barn.
