Chapter Twelve
"You'd think they'd be smart enough to at least take them out of the state," Riggs commented as he, Mathias, Lincoln, and Wiley crouched in the ditch alongside the road and looked through field glasses at the house set back among the trees and shrubs.
"What's the plan?" Mathias asked.
Everyone looked at Wiley. He was the closest to Command in the group and had executed more missions than the rest of them combined so was the logical choice to fill the role of leader.
"The way I see it, our smartest move is to recon the house to see if they're being held inside and how many of the enemy are present. Once we know if they're in the house, we can then check out the garage and the RV storage building."
"And then?" Lincoln asked.
"Then we decide when and where we breach."
"Let's do it." Lincoln agreed and looked at the others. "Yeah?"
"Yeah." Riggs agreed, while Mathias merely nodded.
Wiley directed Mathias and Riggs in one direction, as he and Lincoln took the other. "You do know we're getting too old for this shit, right?" Wiley murmured.
"Yep. But what're you gonna do when someone needs help?"
"Exactly what we're doing."
"Amen, brother."
They proceeded in silence. Within ten minutes they regrouped and compared information.
"Six men, all inside the main house," Lincoln stated. "Apparently, they're not concerned about their prisoners escaping since there are no sentries, or anyone standing guard outside."
"There's a chair and camera set up in the garage," Riggs announced.
"No windows in the RV garage but the door is padlocked, so it's a good bet, that's where Dillon and Josie are being held," Mathias added.
"Then the question is, do we wait for them to go get our people, or do we call them out?"
Lincoln grinned. "Call'em out."
"I second," Mathias agreed.
"With one caveat," Riggs said. "Blow the lock on the RV garage first, so we can make sure that's where Dillon and Josie are. We need to get them out before the people in the house know we're here."
"Agree," Wiley said. "Okay, here's how I see this going...
*****
Josie bolted up, unsettling Dillon, who lay with his head in her lap. "What?" he asked.
"Shh!" She held up a hand.
"Can you hear me?" A voice outside the door filtered in.
She hurried to the door. "Yes."
"You guys okay?"
"Riggs?" Dillon asked.
"Yep. You okay, little brother?"
"We are."
"Good. I need you to back away and be ready. We're going to blow the lock, and when we do, things might get busy."
"Got it," Josie said.
"Okay, let's do this. Count to five."
She grabbed Dillon's hand and ran to the far corner of the garage, knelt and faced the wall, pulling him down beside her to do the same. When the explosion went off, it was relatively quiet, but she imagined it was loud enough to be heard by their captors.
A few seconds later, the door slid open a few feet. She saw the legs of two men, one on either side of the opening and grabbed Dillon's hand. "Come on."
They ran to the opening, got down on their bellies and crawled out. Just as Josie stood, she saw him. A man with a rifle, kneeling at the base of a tree across the driveway. "Down!" She yelled and turned to throw herself in front of Dillon.
Josie felt something slam into her a split second later, with enough force to have her careening into Dillon. She felt his arms go around her and she looked up at him. "Go, QB. Go," she said, surprised at the weakness of her voice. Before she could speak again, darkness swept in and took her away.
Dillon caught Josie as her body went limp. It was then he recognized the chaos that swirled around him. Mathias Gray Horse was running in an odd crouch across the driveway as Dillon's brother Riggs, stood in front of Dillon with some kind of rifle lifted in his hands.
There were shouts and gunfire, and suddenly Riggs turned to face Dillon. "He can do it," Riggs spoke, but to who, Dillon hadn't a clue.
Riggs released his weapon, and it swung down to hang by strap around his shoulder. He reached into a pocket on the vest he wore and pulled out something. "We need your arm little brother. Give her to me."
"No, she's hurt, we have to—"
"Yeah, and we will if you'll do what I say. Now let me hold her."
Dillon relinquished Josie to his brother's arms. "Take this," Riggs instructed, and Dillon looked at Riggs' hand.
"What is it?"
"A grenade. I want you to throw it to the house."
"That's a good seventy yards."
"That's why I'm giving it to you, bro. Just pull the pin and throw."
Dillon had never held a grenade, much less thrown one, but he did as his brother instructed. To his amazement, the grenade hit one of the front windows of the house, shattering through the glass. A heartbeat later, there was another explosion, this one massive. A hole actually blew open in the roof and glass burst from the rest of the front windows.
"Okay, take her," Riggs instructed. "We'll be out of here in two shakes."
Dillon felt a little like a sleepwalker as he gathered Josie's limp form into his arms. Things like this didn't happen to football coaches. This was a nightmare. One he needed to wake from. He felt his knees weaken and sat on the ground.
"Josie, please, wake up." He touched her face, and that's when he realized his hands were covered with blood. Her blood.
He looked at her, saw the blood that soaked the front of her shirt and the pallor of her skin. "No. No no no no." He tapped her face. "Josie, wake up. Please wake up. Josie."
Go, QB. Go. He heard the echo of those words now, in his mind and that brought a realization that literally took his breath. She'd deliberately stepped in the way of a bullet. For him. She did it for him.
Until that moment, Dillon thought he'd known pain, the physical pain he'd suffered when he was injured and the pain of losing his dream. Those things were nothing compared to the agony he felt now. He had no weapons against it, all he could do was hold her close, cradling her to him as grief ripped a howl of pain and rage from him.
He lost all awareness of his surroundings. All that existed was the feel of her in his arms, her shallow almost imperceptible breath that seemed too weak to sustain her and the rapid cooling of her skin. He was losing her and didn't know anything to do but cling to her and pray.
Suddenly there were others with him, hands prying his arms from her, even as he fought to keep hold of her. Dillon fought but was overpowered, shouting and threatening to kill his captors.
"Dillon, stop!" He heard the voice but ignored it then and again when it said. "Fuck it, sorry bro."
The next moment all he was aware of was a horrible pain in his head, and then merciful blackness.
Mathias and Lincoln held Dillon to keep him from falling as he hung limply between them. "He's gonna be pissed when he wakes," Mathias said.
"Me knocking him out will be the least of his problems." Riggs looked over his shoulder at Wiley, who knelt in the dirt beside the still body of Josie Harper.
"Is she...?" Mathias didn't finish the sentence.
"I don't know. Wiley called for a retrieval team for the men we have restrained and a medivac."
Mathias and Lincoln looked at one another, and Lincoln nodded. Mathias addressed Riggs. "Here, take care of your brother while we check."
Riggs took Dillon, lowered him to the ground and sat beside him as Mathias and Lincoln walked over to Wiley. Riggs watched them kneel and then turned his attention to Dillon.
Lincoln ripped open Josie's shirt. The exit wound was ugly and big. "She's lost a lot of blood. Maybe too much. If we can't stop it..." He looked at Wiley.
Wiley shook his head. "Man, we've never tried something like this. I don't know if we can."
"We can try." Lincoln looked at Mathias. "Want to lend a hand and some of that Native juice, little brother?"
Mathias didn't hesitate. "Tell me what to do."
Lincoln looked at Wiley, "You're in charge."
"Fine," Wiley agreed. "Mathias, you hold her. I'll put my hands on the entry and exit wounds. Lincoln is going to try and tap into the power of nature. Once he does, he'll put one hand on top of mine on her chest and the other on the center of your chest. That will connect us all. It'll take all the energy the three of us have to keep her with us until help arrives."
Mathias lifted Josie in his arms. "Do it."
Riggs heard a groan and looked down to see Dillon blinking his eyes. Riggs offered a hand and pulled Dillon into a sitting position. "Josie!" Dillon said immediately.
Riggs pointed and saw Dillon look in the direction he indicated. "What the hell?"
"Damn if I know," Riggs said. He'd sure as hell never seen anything like this and wouldn't interfere for the life of him.
Mathias was holding Josie in his arms. She hung lifelessly. Wiley and Lincoln stood close, facing Mathias. Wiley had one hand on Josie's back and the other on her chest. Lincoln had one hand on top of Wiley's, the one on Josie's chest and the other was raised into the air, palm open as if reaching for the sky.
If that weren't strange enough, light was actually fading all around them. The sky was going dark, clouds gathering in a circle above them with a clearing in the center in which lightning started to flash.
"What the –" Dillon tapped Riggs' shoulder.
Riggs just shook his head and watched in amazement. The clouds started to literally circle and drop until the area around them was rimmed. Light flashed and sparked, sizzling the air and making every hair on his body stand up.
"Holy fuck." Was this real? Light literally gathered into a stream, circling through the clouds, then splitting into two streams. One rotated clockwise and the other counter-clockwise, beginning at the ground and rising up, circling closer and closer
When the streams merged, there was a massive flare that made Riggs throw his hand up over his eyes. The light plummeted, striking Lincoln's open palm. Riggs could hear the sizzle and the short, sudden noise that came from Lincoln.
His hand went to the center of Mathias' chest, and it looked like Mathias staggered a bit, but stabilized just before Lincoln's hand that lay atop Wiley's lit up like a flare. Wiley grunted and a moment later, Josie's body illuminated as if illuminated from within. It stiffened, arched and stayed that way until suddenly the light vanished.
With the disappearance of the light, the clouds also dissipated. Riggs blinked, feeling every bit like a person who wasn't sure they'd just seen what they thought they'd witnessed. He stood, and at that moment the sound of a helicopter had everyone looking up.
There was no more time to think. The medics got Josie loaded up. Dillon begged to be allowed to go with her but was denied. There was no time to waste, and he had to be debriefed. Riggs knew the next few hours would be tense a bit chaotic, particularly for a civilian like Dillon who'd never been involved in anything like this.
And the truth was, he and the rest of the men who'd volunteered for this mission needed to talk before any debriefing. He was willing to bet that none of them wanted anything said about what he'd watched. And truth be told, he wanted them to let him know just what the hell he had seen.