“Lee? What’s going on?”
I dropped my aim wearily. “It’s okay.” They were the right words for both Ken and Billy. “Everything’s okay.”
Ken went back up the ravine to regroup our people, while Billy explained how he had followed us to the tree line-I recalled the noises in the trees on the way out-and had seen Ken and me running to the ravine. It had taken him some time, but he’d finally made it to the gully to follow us. The sounds of our battle had kept him cautious, and he repeatedly poked his head above the top, much as Ken and I had, to keep track of what was happening. By the time he got close enough, only two soldiers remained. One of them spotted Billy and started to shoot, but I cut him down before he could fire. Billy had watched as I ducked, and the last soldier scuttled to the edge of the ravine and dropped into it downstream from my position. He realized the danger that Ken and I were in and raced desperately to help, arriving barely in time.
Billy and I searched the soldiers and had an interesting assortment of equipment piled up when Ken returned with the rest of our people. Automatic weapons, ammunition, radios, and several of the strange-looking night goggles. Ken immediately began issuing orders. “Doug, weren’t you a mechanic?”
The man turned. “Yeah.”
“Check out those Humvees. See if any of them are still drivable.” As Doug jogged over to the jeeps, Ken addressed the rest of us. “I want two people per body. Search them for anything we can use. Take two minutes only. We don’t know whether or not they got word to anyone else, so assume the worst.”
When they appeared to hesitate, Ken yelled, “Go!”
Ken didn’t know that Billy and I had already searched the bodies, so I got his attention and waved him over. We showed him the small pile of gear we had gotten, and he examined the night goggles with interest.
“Generation threes,” he declared. “These weren’t around when I was in the service, but I’ve read about them.” He slipped them on, feeling along the right side and muttering, “Should be a switch. There!” He turned and looked around. “Whoa!” Reaching up, he tripped the switch again. “Very nice! Both lowlight amplification and infrared.”
He flipped the switch and removed the goggles. “How many did we get?”
“Looks like ten,” I told him. “We lost a couple to head shots.” My stomach threatened to rebel again at the thought of one particular body, the head above the eyebrows missing as he lay facedown in the brush. That particular sight had caused me to heave the contents of my stomach into the bushes nearby. “We also got three more of the walkie-talkies.”
Ken handed the goggles back to me. “Good, two goggles per group. Pass out the radios, too.” He checked to see what frequency they were set on. “Change the radio settings. Set them all on thirty-seven. That gives us four radios. My group will do without a radio, the rest of you take one per group. Keep each other informed of your progress. If you run into trouble, pull back and yell for help. We can’t afford to lose any more people.”
Everyone nodded. The latest skirmish and the resulting deaths had brought home just how vulnerable we were.
Doug the Mechanic trotted over to Ken. “Two of the Humvees are shot up from hell to breakfast, too damaged to use. The last one has two flat tires and a lot of holes in the chassis, but the engine turns over and seems to run all right with no fluid leaks I can see. I got some people getting tires from the others, and it’ll be ready to go in a minute.”
“Okay.” Ken turned to the rest of the group. His expression somber, he addressed us. We were his to command. We knew it and, finally, he seemed to know it as well. “All right, folks. We lost some people… some good people. But we got some good equipment, transportation,” he paused as he glanced at Billy. “And it looks like we gained us a good man, too.”
Billy looked surprised at the compliment and grinned shyly.
“Let’s get into town and get our supplies,” Ken finished.
As luck would have it, all three of our casualties were from group two, so Ken assigned Billy and me to them in order to help balance the numbers. Then he and his group took the Humvee and headed for the fabric store. They would be the first into town, and I figured that could go either way. It might be that they would be able to get in and out before any of Larry’s boys knew anything was up. If they were spotted, though, they would be the first to be attacked. They would also be far enough ahead of the rest of us that our chances of helping them would be remote, at best.
My new target was the Rejas High School football stadium. I glanced at the faces of my new companions. Sarah Graham, Rene Herrera, Billy Worecski, and a man who had the unlikely name of Gene McQueen. Gene was the only one I didn’t already know.
“Who knows the quickest way to the stadium?” I asked.
“Denley Avenue to the warehouse district,” Sarah piped up, “skip east three blocks to Stadium Drive. That’ll put us right in front of the gate.”
I handed her one of our group’s two sets of PVS-7s, showed her how they worked, and waved her to the point position. “Lead us in.”
She slipped on the goggles, fiddled with the adjustments for a minute, and headed out at a trot. I put on the other pair and took the rear.
We made it to the stadium without further incident, but there, our plan fell apart. “I guess we know where the rest of our people are now,” Sarah whispered dryly. Just as she had promised, we had come out of an alley directly across from the Eagle Stadium. We hid in the dark confines of a large warehouse, staring out at what had been transformed into a makeshift concentration camp. The trashcan fires out front had forced Sarah and me to turn the light amplification on our goggles down to minimum.
“Lord,” I whispered, comparing this crowd to the density of people I had seen back at Amber’s home. A rough estimate placed the majority of Rejas’s citizens in the stadium, either on the football field or in the bleachers. They were well-guarded with a number of Larry’s boys, armed to the teeth, placed around the perimeter.
“Now what?” Rene’s voice came from behind me. I turned and saw her form illuminated in the ghostly green of low light amplification. I reached up and turned off my goggles.
“Hell if I know.” I blinked for a moment against the darkness. “Anyone have any bright ideas?”
“Check with the other groups,” Billy suggested.
I nodded. “Sounds like a plan. Maybe someone else will have a suggestion.”
I pulled out the radio and keyed the transceiver. “Dawcett here… anyone listening?”
A second later, Eric answered, “I’m here, Lee.”
Mark chimed in. “What’ve you got?”
“I’m just across from the stadium,” I responded. “Looks like they’re keeping all our people here. They’re turning the place into a concentration camp. There’s no way we can get to the supplies without creating a stir.”
Ken’s voice surprised me. “Can you get any of our people out without any major risk?”
Just hearing his voice made me feel a little better. I had expected to have to make this decision on my own. “Man, am I glad to hear from you. I thought you didn’t have a radio.”
“I didn’t. We ran across a couple of Larry’s men that won’t be needing theirs any more.”
“Understood.”
“So, can you get anyone out?”
“We could probably get most of them out, if we could get everyone to work together, all at the same time. But we would probably lose a lot of people doing it. There’s about thirty guards scattered around.”
Sarah cursed and whipped off her goggles. She dropped rapidly to a sitting position beneath the window sill and rubbed her eyes. “Better take a look down the street to the west. And turn off your goggles if you don’t want to be blinded.” She looked directly at me, so I could tell she hadn’t suffered any serious eye damage.
“Hang on, Ken. Something’s happening.”
I slipped up to her window and peeked out.
“Um, Ken?”
