So far, the exit to the brewery was clear, to the extent they could see in the partial darkness. There was a bridge over I-5—this exit was where Highway 101 fed into I-5—that would be very strategic. Grant would have blown it up if he were defending this city. Surely the Limas thought of that same thing.
But there was the bridge, amazingly intact. Grant figured it had to be rigged to blow up when a vehicle went across it.
“Want us to check the bridge?” Pow asked him, knowing the answer.
“Yep,” Grant said, “this is an all-hands-on-deck thing. We need all the people possible. It’s dark, so Donnie’s scope won’t be too useful. Donnie, you grabbed Anderson’s AR, right?”
Donnie nodded. He was using a dead man’s rifle. It was not exactly a good luck sign.
“Shouldn’t Bobby stay behind in the truck?” Scotty asked. “We might need to take off and we can’t be waiting for him to show up with the keys.”
He had made a good point. “You lucked out, Bobby,” Grant said.
“I’ll go in with you guys,” Bobby said. He’d been missing out on all the fun so far by being the driver. “What about Donnie staying and driving, if necessary?”
His suggestion made a lot of sense. Donnie could drive and his sniper rifle was nearly useless in the dark. Bobby was also much better trained than Donnie for things like this.
“Donnie will drive,” Grant said, trying to be as lieutenant-like as possible. It was his nature, especially around the Team, just to say, “Right on, bro.” But Grant needed to practice being a military officer. He knew he would be giving orders in the city, so he needed to start acting like it now.
Bobby parked the truck in a reasonably safe place, far from the street light on the side of the exit. They got out and got ready to go. Ryan and Wes got out of the back. Donnie, in the driver’s seat, had one of the intra-unit radios and Scotty had the other.
“Let’s go take a brewery tour,” Grant said.
It was hard to ignore all the gunfire in the distance and the occasional explosions. There were no fireballs or tracers like on TV during Desert Storm. This wasn’t that kind of war. What was happening was more like evicting a bunch of criminals from a city. The Team moved in pairs toward the bridge, providing cover for each other as they did. One man constantly covered the rear in case anything came at them from that direction. They leapfrogged to the bridge.
They all had flashlights mounted on their rifles. They were costly items, but no one considered them to be a “luxury.” They had Surefire Scout lights, which were extremely durable and bright. The Team knew that almost all fighting happened in low-light and dark conditions. They had to be able to see their targets, so a weapon-mounted light was a necessity. Everyone except Ryan, who joined the Team late, had lights mounted on their pistols for the very same reason. They used the lights on their rifles to scan the area for wires and to look for targets. Those Surefires were amazingly bright, over one hundred lumens, which was several times the brightness of even huge D-cell flashlights.
Of course, there was one huge downside to using their weapons’ lights or any other flashlights. People could see them. They could see right where they were, shoot at the lights, and probably hit the person holding the rifle or pistol with the light. Oh well. There was no other way to do this, unless they wanted to sit there until morning, making them sitting ducks for hours. This would prevent them from advancing. Not acceptable. Surprisingly, walking up to a possibly booby-trapped bridge potentially with snipers all around was a better plan.
As they were searching the bridge and slowly moving across it in pairs, Grant was glad they had frequently practiced night operations at Marion Farm. For some reason, they had not done much night training before he came out to Pierce Point. The Team had done one night shoot with Ted back before the Collapse. They had done some training at night at the meth house back at Pierce Point, but that was it.
If Grant could have done it over again, he would have done at least half of their training in the dark. Regardless, they were doing a decent job tonight and were still much better than any civilians and most law enforcement. They were better than almost any unmotivated National Guard unit, though they would get beaten badly by a regular military unit. Hopefully there weren’t any of those around.
After several minutes of very careful movements and plenty of time to scan for threats, they were across the bridge. This was the most dangerous time. Any halfway intelligent attackers would wait for them to get across the bridge and then attack, probably with attackers back at the entrance to the bridge too, cutting off their escape.
The brewery had several large buildings, each of which was surrounded by a very high chain-link fence. There were gates in front of each building. The Team fanned out from the bridge toward the first gate. Bolt cutters! Grant forgot to bring bolt cutters. What an idiot.
The gate was locked. They went to their right toward the next gate, which was already cut open. Good news.
Or was it? They quickly realized that this meant others could easily go into that building. Maybe lots of them. They huddled together.
“Ideas?” Grant asked.
“Let’s go see who’s in there,” Pow said. “We’ll sneak up on them. If they didn’t get us on that bridge, they suck and will continue to suck. We can sneak up on them in that building.”
“No lights on in there,” Bobby said. “It’s probably abandoned.”
Grant doubted that. With the Second Great Depression going on, he knew these sorts of places would have to be full of squatters, and those squatters would fight like hell to protect their “home.”
“We look for all the doors, see if they’re open, and go in simultaneously from as many directions as possible?” Grant asked.
“I guess so,” Pow said after a brief silence. No one had a better idea.
“Everyone got fresh batteries in their lights?” Grant asked, pointing at his weapon light. Everyone nodded. They would be relying on their lights right now, so this would be a terrible time for one to go out. Not only did they have fresh batteries in their lights, but they all had at least two sets of backup batteries in their kit. Batteries were second only to ammunition in importance in their kit.
“Okay,” Grant said, “I’ll go around the building and try all the doors.” He pulled out a permanent marker from his kit. “I’ll mark each door that’s open with an ‘X’. I’ll put a ‘No’ on closed doors. You guys can stay here in a defensive perimeter. No use splitting all of us up to go check the doors. If there’s shooting, it might as well be at one of us instead of all of us.”
They nodded. They had all taken turns on point. Grant felt like it was his turn. Besides, he was in a hurry and wanted to get into this building and get it cleared for the rest of the convoy. He was getting nervous about that convoy just sitting there in what was now darkness.
Grant paused for about a minute as he and the Team quietly listened for any sound, any sign of life in that building or from anywhere else.
Nothing. There was a lot of gunfire in the distance, and the hum of the big street lights, but nothing from the brewery. There were no people talking, no barking dogs, no vehicles. In fact, there were no cars—zero—out on the streets.
That didn’t seem right. Something was up. He readied himself for whatever was about to happen. He had the raid on the meth house under his belt, but the brewery felt different. Ten times harder than the meth house.
Grant looked at the building he was about to check on. It was four stories and there were no lights on. The windows on the first floor were boarded up, but the windows on the upper floors weren’t. Most of the upper-floor windows were broken.