Long considered what he’d said before walking off. Trish came over and stood in the vacated spot.
“Brent, are you sure this is the best way to strike back? Maybe we should lay low for a while. Last night at the airport was great, but we got lucky. How many more times do you think they’ll let us get away with it?”
He chuckled. “One simple berm would have made our attack useless,” he said dryly. “They must not have anyone from a proper army working for them. It’s defense one-oh-one when on hostile shores.”
“Yeah, well, maybe they learned from it. The next target might be worse for us.”
Brent gave her a dismissive wave. “Bah. No one can improve their defensive posture overnight. The sooner we hit them, the better. We have to do it before they figure out how exposed they are.”
“You think they’re in Dallas? El Paso? Maybe we should check. Hit those targets first?” She leaned in and spoke so only he could hear her. As two experienced guards, it was a mode of communication they were good at. “Then we could swing by and check on Will.”
“I appreciate what you’re trying to do,” he replied. Will had weeks’ worth of food and water in his cell; he was the least of their worries. “I know this isn’t how we planned our retirement but learning about NORAD as the center of their command structure might have been a bigger score than destroying all those planes. We have a real chance to strike a blow against the people in charge of this shitshow.” He pointed to the prison and all the mounds of dropped uniforms.
She did her best to smile. It made sense to see her have such reservations. She was the young, short-haired blonde who helped run a non-violent wing of an out-of-the-way prison. Tough, yes, but she wasn’t a soldier.
“Come on.” He gave her a chuck on the shoulder. “You can take first shift behind the wheel. I’m going to get some rest.” He’d been going strong for days. A mandatory timeout was in his immediate future.
The rest of the men saddled up into their police trucks. He got in his own and worked the CB radio. “All right, men. Say good-bye to Amarillo. We’re going for a little ride.”
Trish climbed in while he was speaking. The two of them had cleaned up and put on fresh uniforms from their lockers. The rest of the men broke into other lockers to secure their own uniforms. Brent wanted his band of merry troopers all wearing the same color, so they could identify each other. They all agreed wearing prison orange would be counterproductive, so they went with guard attire.
Looking at his female companion in the seat next to him, she seemed almost normal. It was a brief glimpse back to the old days of a week ago. They could be gearing up for a routine prison transfer, rather than an assault on a deadly enemy. The feeling went away as soon as she cranked over the motor.
Brent let go of a long exhale. A deep breath before the big show.
“To Colorado Springs!” he exclaimed into the mic.
CHAPTER 9
Fort Collins, CO
Ted thought many of the towns in Colorado and Wyoming were built by the same people. Fort Collins fit the mold of most of the others they’d passed through recently. It had wide, tree-lined avenues, was as flat as a table, and the touristy downtown was crowded with hundred-year-old storefronts that could have time-traveled from the Old West. The central business district, which did have a few modern office buildings four or five stories tall, was surrounded by miles of residential homes.
“It’s just around the next corner,” Emily advised, tapping the phone book’s map.
“All right, be ready for anything. Like we talked about, we’re going to try to get inside with these uniforms, then get ourselves on television. By force, if needed. Then we scoot on out of there.” Saying it out loud made it seem a bit ham-handed, but he was of the opinion there was no other way to get on the air. He was convinced there was an NSA field office monitoring every transmission happening anywhere inside the United States. If they got a message out, no matter how brief, it would be heard by the right people. That alone would bring the bad guys running.
The target building was two-stories high and about a hundred yards long, with off-street parking all along the entire face of it. When everyone disappeared, there had been a good number of people inside, if the number of cars in the lot was any indication. Or, a lot of cars had driven up…
“I don’t think we should take our rifles inside,” he said. “Pistols only.”
Emily didn’t seem surprised. They’d done the same when they went into the server building back at the Minot Air Force Base. He was about to compliment her for rolling with all his changes, but he caught sight of motion in his peripheral vision.
“Wait!” he whispered a second before she opened her door.
She whipped her head toward him, then she followed his eyes to the two people coming out of the Southern Solar affiliate studio. The two men walked with video equipment, including a big news camera. They moved with haste to a white van that was obviously used for on-location reporting.
“When they’re gone, we’ll go inside.”
“Or we could follow them,” Emily replied, her voice steeped with conspiracy. “See what they’re going to film.”
“Why would we do that?” he wondered aloud.
She sat low in her seat, as if the men might be looking for her. “If they’re doing a live broadcast somewhere, it might be easier to get on their camera than if we fought our way inside this building to do the same thing.”
“You think they’re going to be live?” It did make sense logically. Any enemy coming to America would have a lot of ground
