The Last Orchard [Book Two] Read online

  “Just keep moving,” Charlie said. “The sooner we get to our stationary position, the sooner we can set up a perimeter.”

  “No complaints about that from me, boss,” Jason said.

  “You think that those fuckers would have the good sense to just join the rest of us in trying to rebuild society instead of clinging to the shitholes they’ve buried themselves inside,” Nick said.

  Shelly chuckled. “They don’t have anyone to answer to, no one to tell them how to live their lives.” She gestured to the crumbling houses and neighborhoods that started to pop up more frequently the farther they drove. “This is their world now, and you’d be crazy if you think that they’d just give up their freedom for chains again.”

  “Freedom?” Nick laughed, then poked his thumb at a few of the houses that they passed. “Are you serious? That’s not what these people have.”

  “We’re not here to start a philosophy class,” Charlie said, cutting into the conversation before it became too heated.

  Nick shifted in his seat. “I never liked school anyway.”

  Despite the heightened sense of awareness that accompanied a trip near the clan’s territory, the unit arrived at their location without incident.

  Charlie stepped out of the Humvee, the rest of his unit moving silently and efficiently behind him as he took point.

  The house that was their target sat one hundred yards to the west. Charlie raised his scope to get a better look at the situation and found one stationary guard on the backside of the house.

  Jason crouched near Charlie and then lowered his scope. “South side in the trees.” He looked to the twin. “You think you can make the shot?”

  Jason raised his rifle, which he had personally modified. He found the guard in the branches and then lowered it. “He has a lot of cover, but I should be able to get him.”

  “Wait for the signal,” Charlie said, then spun around and found the rest of his crew ready to go. “Four-man standard. I want targets down in one shot. Let’s make this quick and clean.”

  Nods reciprocated the orders, and Charlie turned and led his men through the overgrown jungle of the former neighborhood turned war zone.

  Charlie weaved around the yards, staying low through the tall grass. The number of missions that Charlie had gone on over the past year had honed his senses. Whenever he was on a raid, the rest of the world ceased to exist. There was no orchard back home. There was no Liz, no Adelyn, no friends, no family, no other responsibility. The only thing that mattered was the rifle in his hands, and the men and women at his back.

  Charlie had discovered that there was no greater equalizer than the battlefield. Race, gender, religion, each of them were pointless. War only cared for the offering of blood you brought to the altar of battle.

  With less than thirty yards before the house appeared at the end of the street, Charlie held up his hand, the unit stopping in unison from the wordless order.

  He raised the scope of his rifle and waited until he had a shot lined up against the side of the watchman’s head. Then, keeping his aim steady, he flicked on the laser marker that highlighted the side of the guard’s face.

  The green beam was colorless unless you were either looking through Charlie’s scope, or through Jason’s scope stationed one hundred yards away in the tall grass. But their target, the man in the tree, had no idea he was being stalked up until the millisecond of consciousness that remained to him when the bullet from Jason’s sniper rifle sailed silently into his skull and his body slumped lifelessly in the tree branches.

  With the guard taken out, Charlie and the others stormed forward toward the house.

  The group was so well seasoned that there was hardly anything that surprised them during a raid. And despite the terrorists’ initial resourcefulness of sneaking into the country and disrupting their power grid, Charlie quickly learned that the remaining clusters of cells were highly predictable, which only made them easier to kill.

  Charlie paused at the back door and then sent Shelly and Nick around toward the front. Once Nick and Shelly rounded the corner, Charlie counted to ten, and then he tapped the top of his fist against his helmet, so Lee knew what was coming next, because the moment that Charlie flung that door inward and breached the house, they became an avalanche.

  Whatever was in their path, whatever they came across, was swallowed up and buried with an unforgiving and unrelenting force. And Charlie wasn’t done until everyone inside was dead.

  Charlie reached ten and kicked the door open. The element of surprise vanished.

  With the windows boarded up, Charlie stepped into the pitch black, but the darkness was suddenly interrupted by the flash of muzzle barrels from the surprised enemy sitting around the kitchen table.

  Charlie’s heart rate skyrocketed, and the adrenaline elevated his senses. He pivoted left, his heel grinding against the gritty surface of the dirty kitchen floor. A darkened figure appeared in his scope, the body silhouetted against the backdrop of the wall.

  One squeeze of Charlie’s trigger finger, and the familiar recoil of the rifle stock smacked against his shoulder. The darkened figure’s arms flailed comically to their sides. Another gunshot pulled Charlie’s attention to the right, and through the edge of his peripheral vision, he saw a body hit the floor.

  A muzzle flash around the corner pulled Charlie toward the hallway that led him out of the kitchen and deeper into the house. After five steps into the darkness, Charlie’s vision started to adjust, and when he turned the corner, he fired at the man sprinting down the hall and dropped him before he turned the corner.

  Charlie paused in the hallway as he waited for Lee to join him.

  “Two in the kitchen,” Lee said.

  Charlie added the one in the hallway to the tally. “Three! Three! Three!”

  Charlie and Lee held their position in the hallway, waiting for Nick up front. They repeated the number of killed targets three times so they could keep track of how many they had left.

  “Four! Four! Four!” Nick shouted from the front of the house.

  In the same instant, Charlie and Lee dropped to their knees, rifles raised and primed to shoot, and then a dark figure darted from the end of the hall. Charlie and Lee squeezed the trigger.

  “One! One! One!” Charlie shouted, once the second gunman that Nick had alerted them to vanished. Only one to go.

  Charlie and Lee held their position for three seconds, waiting to see if a second gunman was hesitating and would charge around the corner, but they never appeared.

  When the moment passed, Charlie pushed himself off his knee, his joints cracking from the momentary pause, and then rushed down the hallway, Lee right behind him. He paused at the corner, ignoring the corpse at his feet.

  “Fuck,” Lee whispered. “You think they’re down?”

  Charlie shook his head. “Negative.”

  No movement, no gunshots, no sound save for the breaths passed between Charlie and Lee as they waited anxiously for the final call out.

  A minute passed. Then two. The seconds drew out into painfully slow motion. Finally, Charlie pounded his fist against his head and then turned the corner. If the last remaining terrorist was playing the waiting game, then they’d be here all night, and Charlie didn’t have any plans on having a sleepover.

  He turned the corner, which revealed another hallway, with two doors on the left and one door on the right. All of them were closed.

  Charlie headed toward the first door, unsure if the remaining shooter was inside, but knowing that he couldn’t pass without clearing them first. He positioned himself near the first door and waited for Lee to slide into position next to him, his rifle trained at the door crack.

  Charlie reached for the door and counted down by mouthing the numbers. Three. Two. One. Charlie pushed the door inward and Lee rushed inside, Charlie following quickly behind him, as they cleared opposite sides of the room.

  Both pounded their fists onto their helmets to signal that the room was
clear and then returned toward the hallway. The next door was the one on their right, and again Charlie and Lee repeated the same fluid motion that they had in the first room.

  And while they didn’t find the enemies inside, Charlie paused before he stepped back out onto the hallway, his eyes fixated on the desks that lined the walls. It was hard to make out the objects that lined the desk in the darkness, but from what he could tell, they were work stations.

  But with Lee already at the door again, Charlie didn’t linger in the room, returning to the hallway, turning their focus to the last door on the left.

  Again, Charlie and Lee assumed the same positions. Charlie mouthed the countdown. Three. Two. One. He swung the door inward and the moment Lee was exposed from the crack in the door, the hallway exploded with gunfire.

  In Charlie’s peripheral, he watched Lee fall, and then he pushed forward into the room. Ears ringing from the gunshots, Charlie scanned the corner of the room where the shots had come from and squeezed the trigger.

  Four seconds of gunfire ended, and Charlie turned his rifle away from the last terrorist on the ground, his instinct and year-long training propelling him to finish the scan of the room, then lowered his weapon after he mentally counted the magic number of nine dead inside the house.

  “Clear! Clear! Clear!” Charlie shouted, his voice hoarse from the sudden volume increase. He spun around in the same instant and dropped to a knee to examine Lee. “Where it’d hit?”

  Lee rolled back and forth, grimacing in pain and clutching his stomach. “The vest, but I don’t know if it went through— Mother FUCKER that hurts!” He kicked the door frame with his heel, rattling through the rest of the house, and Nick and Shelly rounded the corner of the hallway.

  “Shit.” Shelly joined Lee’s side and helped Charlie remove the vest.

  “If Dixon would just give us some new fucking gear, then we wouldn’t have this problem,” Nick said, spewing his frustration from behind them.

  “What the hell happened up front?” Charlie asked.

  “The living room fed into a dining room with a lot of open space,” Shelly said. “They must have already been in the middle of the house by the time we busted through the front door and started shooting, so it gave them time to retreat toward you.”

  The Kevlar peeled off, and Charlie lifted Lee’s shirt. Lee remained flat on his back, lifting his head up like a turtle trying to see its stomach.

  “Is it bad?” Lee asked, his voice cracking from the nerves.

  Charlie exhaled. “It didn’t go through.”

  Shelly laughed and then smacked Lee’s exposed and pale belly, which elicited a harsh smack.

  “OW!” Lee grimaced, but started laughing.

  But while the group relaxed, their objective complete and the targets wiped out, Charlie stood and returned to the hallway. He reached for the light on his belt and then flashed it inside the middle room he passed, scanning the work benches that lined the walls.

  Charlie took a closer look at the poorly-shaped bricks on the table. “Hey, I need Jason in here now!”

  Nick poked his head inside the room and let out a low whistle.

  Charlie spun around, holding up the plastic explosive. “C-4.” He gestured to the other tables. “They must have close to one hundred pounds in this place.”

  Shelly came in next, followed by a hunched-over Lee, holding his Kevlar jacket.

  “Detonators, timing devices.” Shelly picked up a few of the parts and examined the exposed copper wires and old cooking timers. “Christ, they’ve got enough C-4 in here to blow up Seattle.”

  Charlie flashed his lights toward the middle table where a stack of papers had been hastily scattered. He approached, plucking one off the top of the stack. “It’s in Korean.” But littered among the foreign jargon, Charlie saw the sketches of blueprints.

  A pair of boots jogged down the hallway, and then Jason entered.

  “Looks like our friends have been busy,” Jason said, walking over to his sister and plucking a timer from her hands.

  “Have you seen anything like this?” Charlie asked, holding up the paper in his hand.

  Jason scanned it quickly. “Demolition plans.” He set the paper down and then moved toward another pile of pages, picking them up one by one, scanning them just as fast. “Christ, this is for one big building.”

  Charlie stepped closer toward Jason. “Does it give a location?”

  Jason studied the papers faster, then shook his head. “Not specifically. It’s either one place, or several targets.” He shook his head faster, no longer reading the pages and just picking them up and trying to put them in order. “Some information is missing.”

  “Let’s pat down the bodies, see if any of them tried to run out with the rest of the plans,” Charlie said, and on his order, everyone but Jason left the room. He inched closer to Jason then lowered his voice. “You think this could be for the power plant?”

  Jason took a moment to look over the plans. “That would make sense, but until I have all the pieces, it’s hard to say for sure.”

  “Right.” Charlie tried not to jump to any conclusions, but with this cell’s proximity to The Orchard and Mayfield, it was hard not to draw the connection. And there was no telling how many more of the cells out there had similar plans.

  If they were lucky, this was it, but Charlie hadn’t been lucky in a long time, and he didn’t think that was going to change anytime soon.

  6

  Nick took over as wheel man when they got back to the Humvee while Lee nursed his tender stomach in the backseat, enjoying the attention from Shelly, who doubled as their medic in the field.

  “I supposed I should be glad your brother isn’t the one taking care of me,” Lee said, smiling, giving her a playful wink.

  Shelly placed her palm over his wound, the touch tender at first, and then pressed hard, causing Lee to buckle forward and howl and squirm in his seat.

  “Careful what you wish for,” Shelly said.

  Jason laughed and then gently caressed Lee’s cheek. “I’m the one with the gentle touch, Lee.”

  Lee jerked his face away from Jason’s hand, and Jason laughed again as Lee wiggled uncomfortably between the twins.

  “Both of you are nuts,” Lee said.

  Charlie turned around, looking at Jason. “You decipher anything else from those papers?”

  Jason cocked an eyebrow up and shuffled through the papers again, the motion ceremonial. “Negative.”

  “It has to be the power plant, right?” Nick asked, one hand on the wheel, driving the Humvee like it was a Z-28 Camaro.

  “It makes sense,” Shelly added. “Dixon’s almost done with reconstruction.”

  But doubt swirled around Charlie’s head. “Maybe.” He tapped his finger along the side of the door, the glass against his arm rattling from the rough ride. He flicked his eyes at the rearview mirror and the pile of explosives in the back.

  “What are you thinking, Boss?” Lee asked.

  Charlie chewed it over. “We need to go to Mayfield.”

  Nick sighed. “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  “You think there are more bombs than what we found?” Shelly asked.

  “I’m thinking we don’t have the whole picture,” Charlie answered. “And I want to know if Dixon has been keeping information to himself.”

  The rest of the trip to Mayfield was in silence, save for the occasional grunt from Lee as he adjusted himself between the twins.

  Jason suggested that Lee go lay down on the plastic explosive, told him that they could make a nice bed. Lee flipped Jason the bird.

  The road from The Orchard and into Mayfield had been cleared. A few other main roadways into Seattle had been cleared as well, which acted as the main supply routes between Dixon’s unit and the other military posts that had been established to help sniff out the remaining terrorist threat and aid in the rebuilding efforts.

  But seeing as how Dixon’s unit was in control of one of the re
gion’s most critical support centers, the former lieutenant carried a lot of weight and was privy to information that most weren’t. Dixon usually shared that information, which helped Charlie prepare for any shortages or conflicts that were heading his way.

  And if Dixon knew something about this type of wide-scale bombing, Charlie was going to have a few words about what they had just walked into. And if he didn’t know? Well, then Dixon and his people were sleeping on the job.

  The first barricade they approached was a simple, two-man post with barbed wire and sandbags stacked on either side of the road.

  Nick didn’t bother stopping, seeing as how all of Dixon’s guards knew Charlie and his unit. Their group had earned respect from the soldiers under Dixon, who lovingly referred to Charlie and his crew as The Mercs.

  The nickname was short for mercenaries. Charlie and his unit were the only non-military combat crew that Dixon allowed on base.

  The second barricade, which was positioned just before Mayfield’s Main Street and the town itself, required a stop, for everyone. It was protocol, even for Dixon. The president himself wouldn’t be able to get through without a badge.

  Charlie fished his identification out of his pocket, which was a local sheriff’s badge that Dixon and Charlie had found. Since there was a limited number of badges, and it was the only sheriff’s station in the county, Dixon and Charlie figured they’d be good to dole out for security purposes.

  “Hey, Charlie.” The guard at the post took Charlie’s badge with a smile, giving it the ceremonial once over before handing it back to him. “What brings you to Mayfield?”

  “Need to talk to Commander Dixon,” Charlie said, adding Dixon’s title. He made sure to do that whenever he was speaking to one of Dixon’s subordinates. Another part of their deal. The old lieutenant had grown accustomed to being in charge.

  “You have an appointment with him?” the guard asked.

  Charlie gestured toward the back of the Humvee. “Got a present for him.”