She nodded. “The fighting has to be finished as quickly as possible. The force Clay sent away hasn’t gone very far. They’re still in radio contact, and as this is the heart of the mountains, that means they can’t be too far off. So whatever we do, it has to happen before they can get back in here. If the reinforcements push their way back into the Bowl, we might still have a chance, but… it doesn’t look very good. We have surprise right now, which counts for a lot, but we also only have shotguns, carbines, and pistols. No armor. And if our surprise is wasted, it’s those things against a bunch of belt-fed machine guns; the fifty from the Hummer is locked up in the cabin along with the other heavy gear. Maybe we get in fast enough to retrieve that all before he calls in his cavalry but… if they dig in, and we get stuck outside the front door we’re pretty much screwed.”
“Where does Jake come in on this?” Greg asked from the back corner.
“He’s going to leave me some kind of signal at some point—I don’t know what it is, so don’t ask. I’m sure he’ll have to improvise when the time is right, but I’m also sure I’ll know it when he delivers it. When he does, I round up all the kids together, take them up the mountainside, and hand them off to Jake. He’ll take them off to a safe location. In the meantime, I’ll head back to my cabin to get outfitted, and then we drop the hammer.”
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” Gibs snorted. They looked at him curiously, so he shrugged and said, “Well, I don’t know why the hell we didn’t think of that before. Get the kids to a safe place. That’s a big old Super Duh to me, then. Davidson, here’s what we’ll do: when it’s ‘go time,’ you head out, round up all the asshats sitting around with guns, and offer to put on a little magic show for them. In fact, offer to show them the Disappearing Obo trick you learned in high school band—”
“I don’t know any… Disappearing Obo…?”
“Don’t be modest, it’s amazing. Now, right at the, uh, climax of the illusion—after you’ve given them the rake and the rubber gloves but before you’ve grabbed the Vaseline from your Sack O’ Goodies—scream out the magic words: GET-THE-KIDS-THE-FUCK-OUTTA-HERE-CADABARA!!! I’m sure we can take it from there.”
“Aye Caramba…” Alan moaned in disgust.
Amanda interrupted, voice sharp with impatience. “Obviously we’ll need some kind of plan that allows us to get them out of here without being detected. The good news is that this is going to be a lot easier now that we have fewer people to deal with.”
“Yeah, but you still have more than is reasonable,” Gibs muttered.
“Gibs… what are you saying? You don’t want to do this? That we shouldn’t fight back? You’ve got something on your mind, obviously. Help us. Please.”
He sighed and muttered beneath his breath, “How did this ever get so fucked up?” He looked around the room at their faces, saw empty stares and answerless questions, and closed his eyes. “Look… there isn’t any nice way to say this. This isn’t an easy problem to solve. In fact, it may not have a solution that any of you are willing to deal with. You’re trying to have your cake and eat it too. You want to go to the mat with these assholes, but you want some kind of guarantee that your kids won’t be hurt in the fighting. I’m sorry; there’s no guarantee that can be offered for this. Not one that’s worth a shit, anyway. You guys wanna get all Mission Impossible over this—you wanna try this big, elaborate plan where they all get secreted out of here to safety and then engage Clay later when it’s convenient? I promise you, it’s not gonna work. Someone’s gonna make a noise at the wrong moment, or a kid’s gonna trip and call out, or one of Clay’s guards is gonna turn around and look in the wrong direction at the worst possible moment. And then you’ll be in some serious shit. You’ll be in the fight of your lives, only your kids won’t be off somewhere safe. They’ll be right in the goddamned middle of it.”
“You got some other way?” Fred asked.
“I do, but you probably don’t like it. Again: no guarantees.”
“Let’s hear it,” Rebecca said. “We should be considering everything.”
Gibs rolled the branch over his knees and shrugged. “Their removal and our attack need to happen at the same instant. Amanda’s right—it’s all surprise and violence of action. If we try to do X, then Y, and then Z—and especially if any of those depends on the other—something’ll get screwed up, and we’re done. X, Y, and Z all need to happen at the same time. The trickiest part would be getting enough people to look in the right direction at the right moment. I suppose… well, we got the two duffel bags stashed in the bus now, right?”
Amanda nodded.
“Think we can get those from the bus to your cabin quietly? Before the shit hits the fan?”
“Yes,” Amanda said. “It would be the same as when Samantha came and got me this morning. The area behind my cabin and the campers is basically a blind spot, and none of those idiots bother to go back there.”
“Be nice,” Gibs said. “Those guys being idiots is what’s going to make this work, if it works at all. Okay, anybody have a sheet of paper? Somebody give me some paper and a pencil…”
The requested items were passed around the room, hand to hand, until they arrived in his lap. He crossed the room to the picnic table, bent over it, and before touching tip to paper, said, “This gets burned when we’re done here, clear?”
“Yes,” Amanda said. She restrained herself from saying more. This was the liveliest—the most engaged—she’d seen him in some time. She didn’t want to do anything to derail his process.
46
SIN
They were awakened the following morning by the sound of gunfire; a staccato cracking of three reports minimal in nature when compared to high-powered rifle rounds. Some sort of pistol, most likely. Gibs almost slept through it entirely, coming awake a few moments after the sound had fully melted away; wondering if he’d dreamed them. Amanda scrambled from her bed at the issuance of the first report. Gunfire had become an alien sound out in the Bowl over the last few weeks. The sudden resurgence could only mean trouble.
She splashed some cold water on her face and was in the process of yanking on a pair of pants when the pounding at her front door began. With the pounding came angry shouting. The voice of a stranger demanding entry; to let me in, goddamn it, before I kick this door in. She fought to maintain control of herself, but her mind was soon racing out of control. That she and Samantha had retrieved the weaponry on the preceding day was too much of a coincidence to discount. And even if this was not what the shooting and the hollering was about, it was going to be damned hard for her to keep a straight face and play it close. She tried to steady her breathing—to slow it down through force of will—but it only made her chest feel constricted. She soon found herself gasping in lungfuls, and the soft tumble of pins and needles running along her scalp accompanied by head-rush was the total reward for her efforts.
She stepped into some chanclas and exited to the cabin’s common room. She found Elizabeth there ahead of her, staring at the shivering front door with a knife in her hand.
“Come on, lady, I’m not gonna say it again! Open this goddamned door! This is your last warning, swear to Christ! I’m comin’ through the son of a bitch!”
“Go hide that knife, Mija,” Amanda said as she advanced on the door. She glanced over her shoulder to see her daughter disappear back into the bedroom, undid the bar latch, and opened up her cabin.