“Okay,” Ginnie said. She looked afraid.
“The base would have been better,” Mary said.
“I know,” Suzanne replied. “I tried. Like I said, they would let me and Taylor on base, but no one else. My father isn’t there, I guess. I left word for him.”
“Suzanne,” Bart said, cutting his eyes at Mary, “we’re grateful you decided to stick together. Really.”
“No worries,” Suzanne said.
“Now look,” Bart went on, “I’ve got a bug-out bag set up by the back door. There’s food and water, one .38 revolver with extra rounds. If we have to leave by boat, we take that and go. When I say it’s time to bug out, nobody better argue. Got it?”
None replied, but Suzanne nodded along with the others, faces dancing with warm candle light and dark shadows.
“I think we should all sleep in the living room. We can pull mattresses from the beds and use the sofa and love seat. If the house gets breached, head for the laundry room. There’s a loaded 12-gauge behind the door.”
“Um,” Suzanne said, “that’s not a good idea. Not with Taylor here. No loaded guns where she can just pick them up.”
“Damn,” Bart said, looking sheepish. He got up and walked out of the room, returning moments later.
“I put the shotgun in the chest freezer.”
“That works.”
“What about the booze?” Bobby Ray said.
“As of now, you’re no longer a drunk,” Bart said.
“Do what?” Bobby Ray said, eyes wide and weathered face more wrinkled than normal. “That can’t be good,” he muttered.
“That’s how it’s gonna be, old friend. Sorry. We’ve got a bunch of rum. But we may need that to trade, or if worst comes to worst, we might need it for medicine.”
“Well,” Bobby said, a wry smile, “I need my medicine.”
“You’re going to have to figure out another way to cope, I’m afraid,” Bart said. “I don’t like it either. But we can’t have a member of our team passed out, not even once. If you fall off the wagon, people could get killed. If you don’t want to do that, then you can go find some other folks to hole up with. We won’t be offended. But I’d consider it a kindness if you’d stay here. We can use your help.”
“Well, I guess,” Bobby said.
In the wee hours of the morning, Suzanne heard voices outside the front door. She’d just taken over the watch from Bobby.
Bart had nailed a piece of plywood over the window on the door, so there was no way to look outside. They would have to do something about that. It sounded like two people, just outside.
Suzanne considered waking everyone up, but decided to wait. The Beretta in her hand felt solid, a reassuring heaviness to it. She’d learned to shoot as a child, one of the few things she did with her father on a regular basis when he was around. She walked up to the door and held her breath, straining to listen.
“…other houses,” she heard.
“…saw her with…” Suzanne heard only bits and pieces, but it was enough to know that these guys were casing her home. She felt violated and indignant at the same time, and with that there was anger and a bit of recklessness. She recognized it, felt the adrenaline pumping in her.
One of the things she had learned from Henry was that if there was going to be a fight, it’s best to hit first. You proceed with violence and do not stop until the threat has ended.
Beowulf stood behind her, looking intently at the door, but neither growling nor barking. Malamutes were not prone to barking.
Suzanne knocked back the dead bolt and flung the door open with her left hand, holding the Beretta in her right.
There were no streetlights, no house lights, but the stars and moon were bright under the clear winter sky and she saw the two young men standing surprised a few feet away from her. One of them held a crowbar in his hand and the other one had a baseball bat, bringing it up as if to swing.
“Whoa,” one of the men said, taking a step back and dropping the crowbar. It clattered on the marble tile outside the front door.
“Get the hell off my property,” Suzanne said. She kept her voice low, daggers in it.
“Hey, now,” said the guy with the bat. He was short and wiry. He had not dropped the bat.
“Last chance,” Suzanne said. She shifted her finger from the trigger guard to the trigger itself.
The bat fell to the ground and the two men ran away into the night and Suzanne stood in the threshold breathing hard. She wasn’t shaking, exactly. It was more like she was vibrating, her whole body tingling and amped up. It was like the way she felt when she was swimming with sharks, but even more powerful, a kind of euphoria and the feeling of being completely alive.
What worried her, standing there in the cool night outside her home, was that she saw in herself the propensity to kill another human being. Worse, she knew that a part of her had wanted to kill that man with the bat.
“For the love of God, wake me up next time that happens,” Bart said from behind her.
Suzanne jumped at the sound of his voice and turned to face him. She could not see his face, but she heard the smile and tension in his voice.
“There could have been more of them,” Bart said. “They could’ve had guns. Don’t do that again.”
“Okay,” Suzanne said. But still, she felt good. She felt like she had faced down fear and doubt within herself and come away knowing something vital. “You’re right.”
She finished her watch and then tossed and turned until dawn. She wondered where Henry was, whether he’d gotten the divorce papers. She prayed he hadn’t, that he still loved her and would be coming home to her and Taylor.
The sound of jets tearing the sky kept her awake, and then Taylor was asking for breakfast and why she couldn’t watch Elmo on TV, and Suzanne pushed herself out of the couch and decided sleep would have to wait.
HOUSTON, TEXAS
Reince Blackaby felt his confidence coming back. The Directors seemed to be willing to cut him some slack, or perhaps they merely wanted him to finish damage control; either way, he was still breathing, and that was a little surprising.
He had assured “Mr. Smith” that any incriminating information had been erased. Blackaby wiped his hard drives, shredded paper documents. The colonel that had become a security risk had been eliminated, along with the rest of that particular unit.
Blackaby issued the orders to commence operations himself. The two Wolf Pack units, Alpha and Bravo, were one of Blackaby’s strokes of genius. The Directors had required a way to control certain things within the United States utilizing methods that exceeded blackmail and media persuasion and public policy. Sometimes, boots on the ground were a necessity.
Blackaby had exerted the full influence of the Directors to form the two units right under the noses of the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, and every branch of the military. The government itself did the hard work for him; the military provided recruiting, training, and physical assets, believing that the Wolves worked exclusively for them. It was a shell game of magnificent proportions, taking advantage of the cumbersome bureaucracy and convoluted chain of command. In fact, the majority of the operations conducted by the Wolves were legitimately ordered by the government. It was perfect. This was also part of the problem, though, because the dogs seemed to have turned on him. A little too smart for their own good.
Now, Blackaby could see through his satellite feeds, that the Directors were once again making money hand over fist in the international exchanges. His failure to contain the situation in the US had a potential silver lining. They would be dumping US dollars, buying Chinese yuan, and signing defense contracts for overseas production at a feverish pace. With zero oversight from Congress, there was no telling what the Directors could accomplish within a short amount of time. When the dust settled, they might net trillions of dollars. They would make money rebuilding the country. In a few months, they would start buying US currency again and make even more money when the dollar increased in value. He hoped his superiors would look at it that way. They’d taken a hit, but in the end, they’d make a killing.