It was risky, this plan. If someone in the security office glanced at the monitor for this room, she was screwed. But there hadn’t been another way. She needed access to the armory. She needed to protect herself and her mom. She wasn’t losing her like she lost Jessup.

  They couldn’t escape unarmed.

  The pounding stopped. Lana sucked in another deep breath and pulled her shirt up to cover her mouth and nose. She held the cancel and enter buttons again, swiped her card, and unlocked the door. The guard lay sprawled on the floor, bleach water soaking into his pants, head lolled to one side.

  Unconscious? Dead? She couldn’t think about that. She slipped her arms under his shoulders and braced her heels against the floor. He had to weigh close to two hundred pounds and Lana strained to move him.

  The water helped, slicking the concrete enough to reduce the friction. She hauled him to the chair and grunted with effort as she dragged him up into it. His head slumped forward and banged on the desk. She winced, but he didn’t even groan.

  She propped his arms up, setting the scene like he’d fallen asleep on duty. It wouldn’t fool anyone for long.

  She tore the keys from his pocket and hurried to the lockers. She retrieved two handguns, loaded them, and snagged extra magazines for each, before wrapping it all in a trash bag. In another locker, there were a few knives. She considered them for a moment, then collected two of those as well, just in case. Derek’s lessons better pay off.

  Her eyes watered and her lungs burned. She’d been in the room too long. She coughed hard and forced the air out of her chest, refusing to take another breath as she shoved the trash bag in the bucket and covered it with the mop head.

  By the time she managed to hit the button to let herself out and get into the hallway, her whole body shook from lack of oxygen. She pulled her shirt down and gasped in fresh air.

  Lana took a final glance at the door to the armory. If he wasn’t dead already, the guard might suffocate with all the fumes. The thought shook her, made her guts twist horribly until she almost thought she’d be sick. It’s just fumes. Don’t wimp out now.

  She forced herself to walk away. She hurried down the hall, listening for the sound of boots on concrete. Nothing.

  If a soldier glanced at the camera feed now, he would see a guard taking a nap and some spilled water on the floor. Worth sending someone to check it out? She didn’t know. But it was already 2040 hours; twenty minutes until they were supposed to be at the back entrance.

  If they were lucky, they’d be outside by then.

  She reached the janitorial station and relief flooded her as she eyed her mother, waiting for her.

  “What took so long?” Elizabeth rushed forward, hands twisting in front of her. “I got here half an hour ago, I thought—“

  “I had to wait for the shift to change in the armory.”

  Elizabeth frowned. “What… why?”

  Lana knelt at the bucket and pulled the trash bag free. “Why do you think?”

  Her mother stared at the bag, the color draining from her face. But she gave a slow nod. “Right. Okay. What… what now?”

  “Now the next part.” Lana tore the bag open and retrieved both a handgun and a knife to hand over to her mother. “I don’t think you’re going to like it.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CALEB

  Horse Creek Base, New United States

  Friday, June 18th, 8:40 pm EST

  Ash and grit wormed their way beneath Caleb’s shirt as he belly-crawled toward the base of a tree. Thirty yards out from the south entrance of the base, the gnarled tree roots gave him cover as he checked his watch.

  Derek eased up beside him and motioned toward the rear door of the mountain top facility. “Any activity?”

  Caleb shook his head. Like the front, the rear door blended into the terrain, with a plain steel door sandwiched between a few feet of nondescript concrete. Two guards leaned against the concrete, faces obscured by respirators as grimy as Caleb’s own.

  The growing storm and the gloom were on their side. With limited sight lines, the guards might miss their approach, especially if they came at the door from the west.

  “No alarms,” Derek muttered.

  “Just the two usual guards, as well. Half expected more.”

  Derek lifted his binoculars, but they weren’t much use. After a moment, he put them away. “You sure? I can’t see anything.”

  Caleb pointed to the entrance. “Move your eyes back and forth. It’ll refresh the cones in your eyes, they’ll pick up a bit more light, and your brain will piece it together.”

  For half a second, Derek gave him an incredulous look. But then he turned his attention back to the base. After another silent moment, he gave a soft snort. “Where’d you pick that up? This what they teach Marines?”

  “YouTube,” Caleb admitted. “Lana went through a ninja phase when she was nine.”

  Derek suppressed a laugh. “That tracks, I guess. You know, she’s good at the close quarters stuff. Picks it up fast. She… said you and her used to practice some?”

  “Yeah.” Caleb didn’t elaborate. Now wasn’t the time to bond over his daughter, or whatever the private was trying to do. Caleb needed to focus and stow the worry for his family for the moment. And feeling anything for the man next to him was dangerous at best. No matter how they cut this, one way or another they were going to be back under fire. It was just a question of when, where, and whether they were prepared.

  He checked his watch again, angling it to catch a flash of lightning that lit the clouds. “Ten minutes.”

  Derek sucked air through his teeth, still watching the guards. “They’re coming up from below?”

  “That’s the plan. Lana and Liz will figure it out.”

  “But—” Derek hesitated.

  “Spit it out.”

  “The guys inside have to call up a confirmation before the outside guards will open the door, and they have to confirm before they’ll open up downstairs. Security protocols. If these guys don’t answer, whoever’s on duty inside won’t open the elevator for them. If Lana doesn’t have the code, the guards up here will cut the elevator and call it in.”

  Caleb swallowed a curse. He hadn’t known the details of the procedure. That gave them, at best, a very small window between Lana and Liz getting into the elevator, somehow, and Caleb taking the guards out. At worst, his family would never make it into the elevator at all.

  Blood whooshed in his ears. “Ideas?”

  Derek stared off into the distance for a long moment nudging Caleb’s shoulder. He pointed to one side of the base entrance.

  Caleb squinted into the gloom until he caught movement. Two shapes passing between the trees, visible only in the intermittent glow of lightning in the distance. He squinted harder, trying to piece out more than a smudge. Was that a rifle?

  The shapes crouched, nowhere near full height, and moved slowly and full of deliberation. Hunters, he guessed.

  “Think those are the guys that took out the patrols?” Derek whispered.

  It couldn’t be anyone else. Not unless some of the civilians had armed themselves and then suddenly gotten a whole lot braver with rifles in their hands. These two were headed for the entrance. Was that their plan? Take out the patrols, use the survivor group from before to cover it, then get close to the base? Then what?

  “There have to be more than two.” Caleb flicked his eyes back and forth, trusting his instincts to pick up subtle movements of shadows on shadows. He tracked the two moving into a position across from the door.

  It didn’t make sense. “No way two people took out all four patrols without someone radioing in. They had to have spread out, ambushed them all at the same time. Otherwise, someone would have called it in, and this place would be crawling with soldiers.”

  Derek leaned out to scan the mountain. “So—what, three more teams?”

  “They’d split up evenly. Two here means there’s as few as eight, as many as… eleven.” Caleb’s jaw clenched. “They want inside.”

  If what Derek explained was true, with the first shot, the base would lock down. A single radio call and Liz and Lana would never escape. All the people coming up the mountain would, what? Die from acid rain exposure? After everything?

  “They’re gonna screw this up.” Caleb groaned out a curse and tugged on Derek’s shoulder. “We have to either take these guys down or get them working with us before they trap Liz and Lana inside and cut us off.”

  He checked his watch. Eight minutes. Eight minutes to keep his promise to his family. Whatever happened next, he was getting them out of there. Elizabeth and Lana would make it.

  Just get to me. That’s all you have to do. I’ll handle the rest.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  GENERAL THOMAS

  Horse Creek Base, New United States

  Friday, June 18th, 8:40 pm EST

  General Thomas stood in the situation room, knuckles pressed to the plastic folding table he’d commandeered for his personal use during the operation. So far, Warren’s unit hadn’t made contact.

  Three hours and no contact.

  A mix of worry and anger simmered in the general’s gut. Anger at Warren, Machert, the whole miserable situation he found himself in with this ragtag assortment of military retirees, failures, cast outs, and reservists who’d probably only enlisted for the paycheck.

  None of them really understood what they were doing here. Thomas was the only one who grasped the value of the opportunity in front of them. Sure, they listened to his speeches, and parroted bits of what he’d told them—what he’d promised them. But throw a little hard work their way and, what? They crumbled?

  He scanned the room. Not a man within his view understood what it meant to go weeks at a time on four hours of sleep a night and still get up and do his job because it meant something. Something bigger and more important than all of them.

  “Can someone get me an update?” he demanded.

  Every pair of eyes in the room turned to him for a brief moment before darting back to their stations.

  “Sir?” Corporal Masterson squeaked out the word. “We… might have a problem?”

  Thomas inhaled deeply and let the breath out in a thin stream. It was good to show anger, prove to these men he was more than in charge, he was a force of nature. But they still needed to talk. To communicate. Not shut down out of fear.

  He toed the line. “We might have a problem, Corporal? Or do we have a problem?”

  Masterson tugged the left earphone of his headset back. “Sir, the patrols missed their last check-in.”

  “Which ones?” Thomas pressed.

  “All of them,” he said. “I’ve been asking for updates for the last five minutes over the secure channel. No response.”

  Thomas straightened from the table so that only his fingertips brushed the edge, splayed out in front of his hips. “No response or no message going out? Can you tell if they're receiving the transmission?”

  With a grimace, Masterson turned back to his blocky laptop and muttered to himself while the General waited impatiently for an answer. It would probably take time, and possibly be the wrong one—Masterson wasn’t any kind of comms technician; he’d had to learn from manuals after Private Carson had been found speaking out of turn.

  Thomas reflected, briefly, on the need to implement a cross-training program on the base. It was a bad idea to concentrate specialist skills in too few men. There was no telling when one of them would lose their sense of loyalty and focus and have to be put down. Machert was an example of that, most likely. It seemed unlikely that Masterson would be a suitable replacement for a trained comms engineer.

  “Any time in the next few days, Corporal.”

  Masterson’s body language became nearly frantic. He finally pulled his headset back entirely and turned in his chair, his face white with fear. “Uh… Sir, I… there’s something off with the encryption program.” He swallowed so hard Thomas heard it from three yards away. “None of the codes seem to work. I tried the non-secure channels, even. No response.”

  A cold fury swelled in General Thomas’s chest. He had a strong urge to flip the table in front of him and grab Masterson by the lapels. But raging would make him look helpless, out of control. His fingers dug at the plastic. There was only one reason the codes didn’t work.

  Machert.

  “Corporal, did you not thoroughly test the secured radios?”

  “I… yes, sir,” the corporal stammered. “I did, sir, I—it was a full diagnostic, all the standard tests, it was working before, I don’t… sir, I’m not an engineer.”

  No, but Caleb Machert was. And Thomas didn’t have a single doubt he was behind the sudden blackout. “Traitor,” he hissed.

  Masterson’s eyes grew wide and white.

  Thomas ignored the man’s fear. The corporal could stew in it, let it make his future efforts a little more thorough. “Fix it,” he growled. “Reset the whole system if you must. And get me eyes on Machert’s wife and daughter. I want them in custody. Now.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CALEB

  Horse Creek Base, New United States

  Friday, June 18th, 8:50 pm EST

  Very few of the general’s men were hardened veterans. Maybe that was why the two men that Caleb and Derek managed to sneak up behind had managed to take out at least one of the patrols. Because these, Caleb decided right away, were not career military.

  “The heck are they?” one of them asked. “Click the radio again, Jake.”

  Jake grumbled something that was swallowed up by a rolling growl of thunder. When it passed, he shook his head. “No answer. Just static. You think they got hit?”

  “Naw,” the first man said. “If they was, we’d know. They’d have folks out here huntin’ us down like pigs. Try again.”

  “It ain’t workin’, Ray,” Jake hissed. “And I’m getting a freakin’ rash on my hands, this crap itches. We need better cover.”

  “Quit whining,” Ray growled back. “It won’t burn your skin off, it’s just a stupid rash. Grow some balls. If we need to, we take those guards out, go in, find a spot to hole up and shoot whatever fish is in the barrel.”

  That was a suicidal idea. No, these men were local militia, maybe—the sort that had far more grandiose ideas about soldiering than they realized and watched too many action movies.

  He gave Derek a nod.

  They rose silently and crept forward toward the pair of prone men. By the time one of them—Jake—glanced back and spotted them, there was no question about who would very quickly win any kind of struggle.

  “Let go of your weapons,” Caleb said softly, “and crawl backward until I tell you to stop.”

  Jake began to crawl, leaving his rifle in front of him. Ray, on the other hand, held very still—exactly like someone about to roll over and try his luck.

  Caleb jerked his chin at Derek, and the young soldier slid smoothly forward and lowered his knee down between Ray’s shoulder blades and neck. Almost casually, he slipped the rifle strap free, then pressed the barrel of his own to the back of Ray’s head.

  “Let it go, and you’ll be fine. Hang on to this, and you’ve got until the next crack of lightning to keep the back of your head.”

  There was a pause. The clouds rumbled softly, flickering with barely contained lightning. Ray let go, and Derek withdrew with the weapon in hand. He put it down a couple of yards away, his own rifle still trained on Ray’s back.

  “Move,” Caleb warned him.

  Ray moved, pushing himself back along the ground beside Jake until Caleb was comfortable, they wouldn’t be seen. He squatted down beside Jake and Derek mirrored him on the other side of Ray. “Roll over, both of you.”

  Jake moved first, again. Ray did so only reluctantly, and then glared up at Caleb in the gloom, his face briefly lit by another flash of lightning.

  When the thunder passed, he spat as he looked Caleb and Derek over. “Guess they was lookin’ for us after all, huh Jake?”

  “You two took out the patrols?” Caleb wondered.

  “All four.”

  “Strike one,” Caleb told him, and looked up as the thunder rumbled again, or an echo of the last peal returned to them. “Here’s how this works. You get to three and I put the two of you out of my misery. How many others are with you?”

  “Nine,” Jake said quickly.

  Ray snarled at him. “Shut yer mouth, Jake.”

  “I don’t wanna die, Ray,” Jake shot back. He raised his palms a little, almost pleadingly, looking up at Caleb. “I really don’t wanna die, mister. You folks—you was killing people. We just came up to try and help folks get over the mountains safe and sound.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Caleb said, and leaned in close, the barrel of his rifle grazing the man’s jaw. “You used those people as a distraction. Who are you? And answer quick. I don’t have all night.”

  “I’m Jake. That’s Ray. The others are Gun, Ryder—“

  “Not your names,” Caleb interrupted. “Who are you? Why are you here, where’d you come from, what do you want? We heard you talking. You really think you’re going to just get into the base and then, what, fight off every soldier inside?”

  Ray and Jake traded looks. Ray’s was defiant, still; Jake’s was desperate. Another crack of lightning burst across the sky. Thunder followed and brought with it harder rain.

  “Can you let us sit up?” Ray complained. “The rain’s in my eyes. It burns.”

  Caleb gave Derek a nod, and they scuttled back a couple of paces. Taking that as the permission it was, the two other men sat up and tugged their hoods forward before rubbing their eyes.

  “You two… folks,” Ray said carefully, “don’t seem like you’re with the base.”

  “We were.” Caleb glanced at Derek. His face was unreadable in the dark. “Now we’re getting out. I have to collect my family, they’re due to come up in about five minutes. Maybe sooner. We need it to be quiet for that to happen. You let me get them out, you can have the base. I don’t care. But you’re gonna get yourself killed if you just charge in.”