Up ahead the fence turned to the south, and Ed angled toward where he knew there was a concealed break in the chain link. Even left unmowed for a whole season the grass on the 3rd hole green was barely ankle high and felt strangely crunchy underfoot, like toasted moss. Ed always felt nervous edging through the fence here—maybe it had something to do with the big propane tank squatting in the parking lot just a few feet away. Even if there were only a few wisps of gas left in the tank it would make quite an impressive bomb with only a few minutes work. With a grenade or some plastic explosive—homemade or military—even just a properly connected car battery, in five minutes he could rig the tank to blow with enough force to kill anyone in the lot. Which was why he hadn’t vented the tank, just in case someday he needed a big boom.
Sometimes it frightened him just how much he’d learned about how to kill human beings. Now, he could hardly remember a time when it had been otherwise. He knelt in the long grass and checked for trip wires, disturbed grass or weeds, then peered through the gap in the fence, listening intently. Nothing.
Ed dug around inside the cargo pocket of his pants and found the small flashlight, the one with the red cellophane taped over the lens. Aiming it as well as he could in the dark, he hit the button once, waited five seconds, then hit it again.
After a long enough wait he was wondering if he’d have to send his signal again, he saw an answering red light. Two blinks, then a five second pause, then a single blink. All clear, come on in. He checked over his shoulder. Early was with the kid about twenty feet back, both of them squatting in the shadows of the fence.
Taking a deep breath, Ed pushed through the cut in the chain link into the small parking lot.
The industrial park was little more than a short street lined with small one- and two-story machine shops. The tan brick building to his right had once housed a fire defense equipment business, selling and serving extinguishers and sprinkler systems. To his left was a two-story grey building; whatever it had once sold was now buried under a layer of bricks from the dump truck that had long ago careened through the front door. There were bullet holes in the door frame.
Ed hugged the brick wall to his right and moved cautiously forward, scanning the street in front of him and the building fronts on the far side. When he ran out of wall he checked left and right. Nothing moving, no sounds other than one bird and a few crickets. He checked back over his shoulder and saw Early had cleared the fence, then quickly jogged across the street.
CHAPTER FOUR
The building was musty and dusty. It smelled of old paper, damp drywall, and, oddly enough, burnt metal. Jason caught just a quick glimpse of a small cluttered office space, after following Early up the stairs, dark figures rising and turning to look at him, before he was violently shoved up against the wall and the rifle ripped from his hands.
“Hey! What the—”
“Shut the fuck up!” somebody snarled. A flashlight came on in his face, soon joined by others. After moving around in nothing but moonlight the flashlights seemed bright as the sun. He was surrounded by men and could sense them pressing close, but with the lights in his eyes he couldn’t see a damn thing.
“Strip,” he was commanded.
“What?”
Into the cone of light around him came the muzzle of a rifle, pointed right at his face. From the long flash hider he recognized it as Early’s. “Don’t mess with us, boy,” came the familiar drawl, the big man a vague silhouette beyond the lights. “Ain’t nobody jokin’ here.” The strong smell of unwashed bodies filled his nostrils.
“Backpack first, hand it over,” someone else growled.
Jason couldn’t take his eyes from the rifle bore just a few feet from his head. What the hell was going on? Were they robbing him? These were supposed to be the good guys. Suddenly a thought occurred to him—how did he really know who they were? They could just as well be thieves, running a con on Colleen, taking whoever she rounded up, stealing their gear and killing them. Hell, she could be in on it, bringing them idiots who were easy pickings. Oh my God, or worse—maybe they planned to rape him, or—
“You don’t start stripping they’re gonna hold you down and cut your clothes off,” Early warned him.
Jason jerked, then with fumbling hands pulled off his pack and handed it over.
“You got anything you want to tell us?” He recognized the voice as Ed’s.
“What’s going on?” He couldn’t decide whether to be angry or scared. Ed noticed the anger, nodding, filing that information away. Anger was good.
“We don’t much like being lied to, boy,” Early said warningly. His shoulders were starting to ache from holding the rifle up for so long. With his forefinger he checked to make sure the safety was still on.
“What are you talking about?” He stood there, a nervous grimace on his face, until one of the figures smacked him on the shoulder. Clumsily he pulled off his shirt, which was taken from his hands.
“Even in this godawful heat all of the troops wear their body armor when they go outside the wire. The plate stuff’ll stop anything we’ve got, even the hotrodded stuff they’re shootin’, but I don’t think your thirty-thirty’ll even go through the soft part of their vests. If you’d ever shot one of them you’d know that. Six or seven people my ass.”
A low grumbling made itself known and the shadowy figures all lifted their heads. The sound rose into a growling roar close above them, louder and louder, then began to fade.
“Going up and away,” Ed’s experienced ears told him.
“Afterburners,” someone else agreed.
“And if you’re nineteen,” Early went on as if there’d been no interruption, as Jason tugged down his pants, “I’m wearing little pink panties with a rose on the front.”
“No telling what else you’re lying about.” Ed glanced quickly at Early. Little pink panties? “For all we know Military Intelligence sent you in to infiltrate us.”
The young kid shook his head vigorously. “No, no, I’m telling you the truth. My dad wouldn’t let me come, I’ve been wanting to join up for years, but finally I just left anyway, and—”
“How old are you?” another voice demanded, someone he hadn’t heard before.
“Seventeen,” he said. He looked at the silhouettes around him, then lowered his gaze. “Sixteen,” he mumbled, knowing the time for lying was over. Then he jerked his head up, defiance once again showing. “But I’ve shot at soldiers. I—” He stopped, realizing he’d gone farther than he’d wanted to.
“You what? Hand those over.” Fingers snagged the jeans from his hand.
“I’m just not sure I hit anyone.” As if being forced to strip wasn’t embarrassing enough. And he knew he didn’t hit anything other than the pickup the soldiers were in. They sped away, and he cut cross-country for home. He’d later heard they’d busted down the doors of any house close to where he’d fired the shot, interrogated anybody they found at home and searched the houses for illegal weapons. He’d felt guilty about that, but also exhilarated that he’d actually, finally, done something.
“Yeah.” About what I thought, Ed mused. He glanced again at Early, who seemed to be having trouble keeping his rifle up.