Chapter 5

Now that the women were dressed, it was time for us to try to escape without having our skin punctured. I asked the two new women if they could shoot and both denied ever having learned. Oh, well, Ann and I would just have to cope. Since I had the "bullet proof" armor, I had to be the one who went first, with Ann trying to cover me.

I showed her how to fire individual shots by pressing and releasing the trigger before the next round timed out. She got the idea pretty quick, so I had her start putting single shots through the facing doors to keep the enemy heads down. Once she had a rhythm set up, I dove out of our door and rolled on the floor to a lounge chair I hoped to use as cover. One of the enemy fired at me when I was rolling, but he missed. However, Ann didn't miss when she returned the shot with automatic fire.

Once I was in position, I signaled for the first of the two unarmed women to join me. She jumped up and ran toward me, despite the fact that she had been warned to stay low. On top of that, she got about half way and chickened out. She turned around to run back to the bedroom, and that was more temptation than fate could stand. She was hit in the head by a shot from the enemy side, and the stupid woman became somebody else's problem. I hated to lose her on principle, but my rational side saw that we were better off without her.

I saw Ann talk earnestly to the other woman, even slapping her face to get her attention. This time, when I signaled for the woman to run to me, she followed directions and made it all the way to me without drawing fire. Now it was Ann's turn. I sprayed shots into the open door while Ann dashed to my side.

OK, now there were three of us at the large lounge chair and very near the door we had to get through. One of us was a woman who was scared shitless and very near terminal hysteria, one of us was a woman who was really pissed off and ready to take on the world, and one of us was a man who wished he knew more about what he was doing and thanking God that he had watched all of those war movies.

The remaining unarmed woman was named Juanita; at least she would answer to that sometimes. I gave her the job of pushing the big chair ahead of us while Ann and I provided cover. We had about 10 feet to go to get to the door. Luckily for us, the door was wide enough for the chair to be pushed through it if we were careful. I didn't know how careful we could be while being shot at, but we could try. Ann and I alternated popping up and firing four or five shots on automatic and ducking back down. Meanwhile, Juanita pushed the chair, not very enthusiastically, but she did push.

We got to the door, which was the door to the hallway. I had long ago given up any thought of escaping the way I had come in. There was just no way the two women were going to manage climbing down that roof support without getting hurt, even if we were not being shot at. Our only choice was out the front door, and that was not going to be easy.

I had the honor of looking out the door when we reached it. To our right was an expanse of hall leading to several other rooms, and to our left was a short length of hall leading to the stairwell. I caught glimpses of men hiding in the doorways leading off the hall. There were five doorways to be concerned about to our right and one doorway to our left. The other doorway on our left had been the torture room, and that door was locked, so I didn't worry about it.

Then I had an idea. I told Ann and Juanita to stay where they were and to make sure that there was no charge at us from the rooms on the right. Ann should shoot enough to keep the men on our right cowering back in the doorways. She could shoot as much as she wanted; her only concern was overheating the gun barrel. That could result in a serious burn, so she had to watch out for that.

I was going to retrace my steps and open the door from the torture room and fire directly into the opposite room. My plan was to kill whoever was in that room. When that was done, the women should push the chair out into the hall to the right of the door and we would use that as a shield. When I was ready, I would call them to follow my route to the torture room, and we would escape down the stairs. I went over the plan several times, hoping to make sure that Juanita understood what I wanted them to do.

At last, Juanita seemed to understand, so I left them to put my plan into effect. Ann had been firing intermittently to keep the enemy occupied all this time, so there was no change in routine when I left. It took only a few seconds to get to the torture room. I unlocked the door and flung it open. I managed to catch a man on the far side of the hall by surprise, and I had no trouble eliminating him. I thought that I had eliminated everybody in that room, but I had to be sure.

I ran across the hall and into the room, firing all of the time. I guess I was lucky that there was nobody else in the room. Anyway, our way was clear to move downstairs. I timed my move to coincide with one of Ann's bursts of shots and ran across the hall. I called softly in English for the two women to join me.

Ann told Juanita that it was time to go, but that was when things went wrong. The stupid, or maybe it was fright that made her do it, woman stood up straight and ran toward me. That was enough to earn her four bullets in her back; she must have been dead before she hit the floor.

Ann screamed "NO!", but, of course, it did no good. I yelled at Ann to come on, and she ran to me according to plan. She stayed in the doorway to cover my back as I slithered partway down the stairs to make sure that we would not be ambushed when we got there. The way was clear, so I called to Ann to join me.

That woman knew how to survive! She ran to join me and immediately came just far enough down the steps that she would be shielded by the slope of the steps. She turned around and faced the hallway we had just come from. She was just in time to blow away two men who were running down the hall trying to get to us. We stayed where we were for about 10 minutes in case anybody else tried to be brave. Hell, it was obvious that we were trying to get away, and the big boss was dead, so I couldn't figure why the grunts were still trying to kill us. I guess it was just the habit of meanness on their part.

Anyway, we pushed on until we reached the bottom of the stairs. Wonder of wonders, there was an outside door right in front of us. We didn't have to fight our way through the rest of the house. Here was our opportunity to get outside. If we could get across the fence to my horse, we could get away. We could both ride that horse for the short distance to escape, so we had a good chance to get out of there alive, after all.

Ann stayed at the steps to cover me while I ran to the outside door. I didn't get shot at, so I was very happy at that point. I opened the door and was met by a volley of gunfire, some of which hit me. I was knocked down, but otherwise unhurt, except to my dignity. Now, those bastards had pissed me off. I told Ann to hold her position while I cleaned out these pricks.

With my stupid overconfidence under better control, I dove through the open door and rolled to a stop behind a roof support. It wasn't much shelter, but I didn't need much with my armor. The idiots opened up on me, so I had plenty of muzzle flashes to shoot at, and, believe me, black powder produces an impressive muzzle flash. I went into machine gun mode and sprayed lead all up and down the line of those flashes. I don't know how many I killed, but there was no more shooting from that direction.

I was willing to bet that I had eliminated most, if not all, of the remaining guards, so I called to Ann, and we made a run for the gate. For whatever reason, no one shot at us, so we safely reached where I had tethered my horse. We both climbed on and left for my hotel at a brisk pace.

I took Ann up to my hotel room before I returned the rented horse. When I got back, she was sitting on the bed waiting for me. "Abe, where do you want me to sleep tonight?"

"If you wish, I will rent the adjacent room where the connecting door is. I know it's empty, so that won't be a problem."