Chapter 24

Early Thursday Morning

Nexus Ranch

Near Harborton, Washington

Kelly was doing her best not to show her slightly frayed edges. She was responsible for the non-combatants who were holed up in the safe room below the ranch house and she couldn’t let them know how worried she was. Siofra, Sian, Tina, Eesha, and the others were all fine inside the foot thick steel and concrete walls of the below ground safe room. But she was worried about the women and animals outside in the bunker under the temporary quarters and even more so about Ben and her sisters in harm’s way protecting all of them.

She had to keep herself positive though, she was responsible for these lives, and allowing them to worry over much wouldn’t help a thing. Why couldn’t people just leave them all the hell alone?

“Sounds like they’ve been able to round up nearly all the intruders Ms. Kelly,” said Tina from her listening station at the comm unit.

“Thank you, sweetie, that’s good news!” Kelly replied to their most recent addition.

Tina was now fully recovered and determined to be a part of everything her new family did. She was normally inseparable from Maria, but Maria wouldn’t let her accompany her to the bunker under the barn. One of Maria’s duties there was to provide back up security and Maria had felt that Tina had already been in enough dangerous situations. So Tina was helping man the radios and obviously worrying about her best friend.

Kelly breathed a small sigh of relief. Maybe this would go like they expected. But then she heard Sian start to cry from among his furry nest consisting of three kittens and the wolf dog puppy now named Awhoo.

“Shshshsss,” said Siofra as she bent to comfort the normally happy little boy.

“Is he okay, Siofra?” asked Kelly. She was concerned, Sian almost never cried.

“Stomach hurting him. I forgot his umm ... medicine upstairs,” said Siofra with a frown. “So sorry, I don’t know how I forget.”

“Siofra, It’s okay, this is not a normal situation and everyone was in a hurry to get down here,” said Kelly. “We can’t let him suffer though and I don’t know enough about his body to heal him from this kind of thing. It might be a while before we get the all clear.”

“I go get his things quickly,” said Siofra.

“No, I can’t let you do that. You need to stay here with Sian. I’ll run upstairs and get it,” replied Kelly. She knew no one was supposed to leave the safe room, but it sounded like things were almost wrapped up outside and there were no reports of anyone getting close to the ranch house.

“Are you sure this is okay dear?” asked Jill.

“Yes I’ll be fine mom, it will be 5 minutes at most,” replied Kelly as she slipped her compact Glock .380 from the gun safe into the holster at the small of her back. “Siofra, you are in charge while I’m gone. Remember under no circumstances do you open the door after I leave.”

“Yes milady ... uh Kelly,” said Siofra.

Kelly bent down and kissed Sian’s forehead and then made her way to the massive door. She slapped the opener and waited a second as the heavy door slid open unaware of the furry posse right behind her. As she stepped out and hurried up the stairs the 3 kittens and Awhoo clambered out on velvet paws.

Siofra looked up just in time to see the puppy’s wagging tail as it barely cleared the automatically closing door. It was too late to keep them from running after Kelly. She should have known they would try to follow her. If they weren’t playing with Sian those four were following Kelly everywhere.

Well, it should be fine, thought Siofra with a shake of her head, she’s only going to be gone a minute.

Early Thursday Morning

Nexus Ranch

Near Harborton, Washington

Dell didn’t understand what all the fuss was about. All this cloak and dagger, GI Joe bullshit and he just walked into the compound straight down the long gravel driveway. Shit, he should have just driven in. Strangely, he didn’t see anyone about. They must either be in the outbuildings or having their fun out in the woods. He heard faint screaming sounds occasionally and it just made him more annoyed than ever that the mercs had pre-empted his fun. He had honestly thought that that prick of a team leader Pieter was too much of a boy scout to let his troops enjoy themselves with the women.

There were a couple of lights on in the main ranch house so that’s where he was headed first. The broad front porch didn’t hold any surprises, but the front door was locked tight and felt way too massive for him to easily break down. That was strange, maybe the mercs hadn’t hit this building yet? No matter, Dell was confident that there would be another way in as he worked his way around the building.

There it was! A window barely open at the bottom on the side of the house. Geez, they didn’t even have this place alarmed. What a bunch of nimrods. The window slid open noiselessly and Dell rolled over the sill and into what appeared to be a large living room. He got a sense that the lower floor was unoccupied but checked each room anyway. Nothing. Alright, maybe someone was hiding upstairs.

Dell confidently strode up the stairs and into a huge bedroom. A quick look through the closets and ensuite bathroom and he decided to move on to the adjacent study/office.

Again, nothing. Damnit, where the fuck was everyone? Dell was just about to give up when he heard it. A slight creaking sound from somewhere on the first floor. And then a soft, familiar voice accompanied by footsteps heading up the stairs.

Ah! The mouse was home after all, and this time he was ready to play.

The damnable ground fog had finally cleared just as they finished working their way around to the far side of the compound. They had been able to slither and low crawl to a slight rise of ground within about 100 meters of what appeared to be a large open barn. Now we might finally be able to figure out what is going on thought Pieter.

Earlier, he had sent one of the Chechens out to try and locate the rest of his team but the man returned and reported no sign of them.

As the Chechens gathered in behind him he carefully rose up from the slight hump of earth that gave them the last bit of concealment before the open field of fire surrounding the outbuildings and scanned the area with his night vision binoculars. Shit, there was still no sign of his team or the one Gabriel had led on the far side of the huge property. In fact no movement at all.

It appeared that most of the men of both teams had disappeared without a trace except for some abruptly cut off screams. It didn’t look like there was any way to accomplish the mission with the team he had left. This was not a hill he wished to die on. ‘Da’ thought Pieter, it was time to get the hell outta Moscow.

He hated to leave men behind but there wasn’t any alternative that he could come up with. Perhaps they could return with a larger, more ‘official’ force and recover those that were missing. Luckily, he and Gabriel had worked out last ditch signals in case comms were down. He had two signal flares. A green one to proceed and a red one for abort. The abort signal would trigger a fall back to the alternate assembly area for pickup.

He had just assembled the red popup flare and was preparing to slap the bottom spike igniter that would send the flare flying high up over the compound when a hard hand fell on his.

“Nyet. We take care of this,” said one of the bearded Chechens with a grin.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Pieter asked.

“We get big bonus to make everything kaput.”

Before he could react another set of hands slammed him face first to the graveled ground and snatched his rifle and sidearm away.

“You wait here. Big bosses afraid you too pussy to kill everyone after. Now op is shit. We do it now.”

Pieter watched stunned as the three Chechens dropped their tactical packs and pulled out 2 satchel charges each. They looked like old US Military M20s. Pieter had seen them used in Iraq and knew each one contained 15 pounds of C4. These were bunker busters and used the confined space inside a structure to create enough overpressure to destroy it from within. Even just placed next to the structure they could easily take a non-reinforced building down to its foundation.

And these fucking Chechens were laughing about what they were about to do. Pieter couldn’t let this happen. His team’s job had been to neutralize the limited armed elements of some undefined ‘terrorist’ group, it wasn’t to murder an unknown number of people en masse. Besides, there might be members of his team held somewhere in these buildings.

As the Chechens rose to their feet they slung their rifles, took a charge in each hand, and started running toward the compound, Pieter flipped over and scrambled for the backup piece in his ankle holster. It was a very long shot for the old short barreled 9mm Makarov Pieter thought, but he had to do something.

Taking a kneeling position and steadying his breathing he placed the front sight blade on the leading Chechen and took up slack in the trigger.

“We’ve gottem Captain. Tink reports them 100 to 200 yards southeast of the barn, holding behind a little hill. Tink said suddenly her vision cleared and there they were,” Fenri said as he translated the transmission from their “eye in the sky”.

Ben knew they were going to have to unravel the mystery behind what had obscured their scout’s vision, but for now, he had to figure out what to do about these 4 holdouts. He wasn’t a cold blooded murderer but he didn’t know what these last four were up to.