“Report coming in that a fourth helicopter is coming in to land,” one of the hams announced.
John nodded. “You still have the frequency they are operating on?”
The ham nodded.
“Switch to transmit.”
“John, they’ll track us the same way they tracked that forward recon unit.”
“He’s on the ground or just about down. Now’s the time to send him a message, and then we move this unit down south of the railroad tracks.”
The ham smiled, nodded, and handed John the mike. “Fredericks, do you read me?”
There was a moment of static and then the click of another radio coming online. “Who is this?”
“You know damn well who it is.”
A pause.
“You drag out your response to more than thirty seconds, and I shut down,” John replied sharply.
“You called me,” Fredericks replied.
“Just to tell you this, Fredericks: I’ll not be satisfied now until I see you dead, and I hope your people are listening to me. Your alleged leader has violated the most fundamental laws of humanity, of warfare, and of what our country and Constitution stood for. Refuse to obey his orders, and you’ll be spared. Comply further, and you are as guilty as he is, and in the eyes of the world, you are no longer any part of what America was and will continue to be.”
He clicked the transmission off before Dale could even reply.
“Let them stew on that,” John said coldly. “Wait twenty minutes, then get on the horn and send out the coded message for our unit leaders to meet in the Ingrams’ building at six tonight. It is time for some payback. I’m heading back to the hospital.”
Though there was no indication that another strike was up, Maury maneuvered cautiously until they finally pulled up a block behind the Assembly Inn, and he walked the rest of the way.
He thought he had learned to get used to it; an essential part of his job had become visiting the wounded and dying on a near daily basis after the battle with the Posse and the numerous other skirmishes afterward. He had dealt with bullet wounds to the gut, students facing death with all painkillers depleted, asking him to hold them and pray. He had dealt with far too much, but this was different. The hospital had been deliberately attacked, nearly a hundred within, most of them already wounded and torn apart by the strafing attacks.
Drying blood was splattered against the walls in the corridor. Out behind the Assembly Inn was now an open-air morgue. More than seventy dead from the attack lay side by side, covered with blankets and bloodstained sheets. Families and loved ones were sitting beside bodies, lost in shock, and he recognized many of them, horrified to see a former student holding the lifeless hand of a girl he had married but a month earlier.
All of it filled him with cold, intent calculations as he sat down beside Forrest’s cot, his room a storage closet that was windowless and stifling hot in the late-afternoon heat, the scent of unwashed bodies, blood, and filth hanging strong in the room. John coughed to conceal his gag.
Forrest chuckled weakly. “Guess I stink like shit,” he whispered.
“Well, you ain’t no bouquet of roses, Forrest.”
“How bad is it out there?”
“Bad.” John sighed. “More than a hundred dead here and a couple of hundred wounded downtown. It is devastating.”
“I feel responsible for this,” Forrest said. “You doing what you did for us.”
“What the hell was I supposed to do? Turn away a bunch of kids?”
“You could have taken the kids and dumped me by the side of the road or turned me over to Fredericks, and all this could have been avoided.” He pointed out to the hallway that was a charnel house.
John shook his head. “We both went through the same training a long time ago, Forrest. Our wars were different, we took prisoners and treated the wounded.”
Forrest chuckled. “Well, at least when CNN was around.” He paused. “But yeah, unless we were dealing with a sniper or some bastard who had killed a lot of innocent people, we still took them in.”
“Handing you over to Fredericks is not what this community is about. And besides, I owed you one. That guy with you, George, tried to take me out, and you were the one who put him down. So what the hell was I supposed to do? But honestly, I didn’t expect this level of retaliation.”
“And now you wish you had done different?”
“Hell no! If that bastard is willing to do this, he would have wound up doing it anyhow at some point, to others if not to us, Things are spinning out of control. I pray it’s not all the way up to Bluemont, but this is not the way to pull this country back together.”
“So why are you here?” Forrest whispered.
“I think you and your people are the experts we need now.”
“Go on.”
John ran his idea past Forrest, who nodded with approval. “You have to act now, tonight,” Forrest replied, “otherwise, tomorrow will be even worse. You have to assume he has at least a few people infiltrated in here who are reporting on everything, and more targets will be pinpointed.” He paused and smiled weakly. “Hate to admit it, John, but in those first minutes when my encampment was hit, I thought it might have been some of your people who called it in. Sorry.”
“No need to apologize. Remember an old song—Crosby, Stills & Nash—the line ‘Paranoia strikes deep, into your soul it will creep.’”
“Never heard of them.”
John forced a smile. “Different generation, I guess.”
“Anyhow. Get some of my people in here, John; we’ll go over the plan. They know the way in and will be your point men.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
As each member of the lead assault team went into the drainage pipe that ran under Interstate 240, John offered them a pat on the back, a soft word of encouragement. Seventy were going in, divided into five assault teams, each one guided by one of the reivers. It was a route they had used for over a year to infiltrate in and out of the area of Tunnel Road to scavenge for supplies from the abandoned stores that had once lined the road—and also for raids for food. They had even been so bold as to pull a raid and holdup on Mission Memorial and disappear back through this concealed approach, which emptied out onto a trail that took them back over the parkway and then over the mountains to their home base.
This whole thing was one desperate gamble, but the report that had come in even as he was leaving Forrest’s bedside had sealed the decision for John. A transport plane had touched down at the Asheville airport, apparently loaded with supplies for the choppers. If they didn’t do this now, come morning, the nightmare over Black Mountain would resume. It was obvious that Fredericks would just keep pounding from the air until either they submitted or the entire town was destroyed.
John looked down at the illuminated dial of his old-style wristwatch. Five minutes to go. He leaned back against the embankment, breathing hard. It had been a day and a half since he had slept, and he cursed the fact that he was getting older. He felt utterly exhausted, his chest, head, and mouth aching, but in the next few minutes, he had to be sharp and ready to go.
Everyone had made clear to him that his forays to the front were finished, and he reluctantly agreed. The concussion was clearing up, but all the running, ducking for cover, and slamming Makala up against the protection of the wall in the surgery ward had cracked his barely healed rib open again. Each breath was a stabbing pain, a sneeze or cough absolute agony.
To ensure he stayed back from the front line, Kevin Malady gladly conspired with the town council, assigning Grace and a half dozen of their best as his security and communications team, along with his neighbor and friend Lee Robinson, who was given the order that if need be, he was to knock John down and sit on him, something Lee could easily do.