Grace Under Fire Read online

Grace thought a minute. “The high school football field!”

  “Which way?”

  “West. A couple of miles.”

  The chopper veered left. Her stomach lurched but she wasn’t sure if it was from the movement of the helicopter or from the impending unknown of landing in her hometown. She wasn’t sure what was going on down there but it seemed like they were under occupation by ill-intentioned hikers.

  Tom eased his hand over onto hers, squeezing it. “We can do this.”

  “That it?” Chuck asked, pointing at a two-story brick building in the middle of a once-manicured field.

  Grace jockeyed her head around to verify that he was pointing at the correct building. It was a small town and there weren’t that many brick buildings. “Yes, that’s it!”

  Chuck veered in that direction. In seconds they were dropping down to the ground in what seemed certain to be a devastating impact. Thankfully, Chuck was a skilled pilot, and eased the chopper down at the last second.

  “Hot landing,” Chuck said. “Grace, pitch out your gear and take cover.”

  Grace didn’t like the urgency of the situation. It made her feel like she was back in the danger zone of traveling the highways alone. She hadn’t expected to feel that upon reaching her own hometown.

  “Grace!” Chuck repeated. “You gotta move.”

  She snapped into action, removing the headset and hanging it in front of her. She opened the door and slid their gear to the edge. She jumped out, pulling the duffels from the chopper, and dragging them clear. She ran back to see if Tom needed any assistance.

  He had maneuvered himself to the door and used the hoist to lower his track chair to the ground. He disengaged the rigging while Chuck retracted the hoist line. Shortly, he was in the chair and strapped in.

  Grace scanned the chopper to make sure they hadn’t left anything.

  “Good luck!” Chuck yelled.

  Grace gave him a thumbs up. “Thank you for this!” she yelled over the noise of the chopper. “I appreciate it very much.”

  “I wish I could’ve done more! Sorry about the turn and burn!”

  Grace shrugged, unable to make out what he was saying any longer. She slid back out the door of the chopper and crouched over her gear, using a hand to cover her eyes.

  Tom, unable to duck down while strapped into his chair, reversed the chair and backed clear of the rotor wash. There was a whine of acceleration and Grace was pummeled by the increasing downblast, then it was over and the sound of the chopper retreated into the distance.

  Grace opened her eyes and looked at Tom. He was smiling at her and she started to smile back. For a second the world was peaceful again, then she caught movement in the distance behind him.

  “Shit, we have company!” she said.

  In the distance they could see several folks, maybe a dozen, running toward the field. Tom spun his chair to catch sight of them, the tiny drive motors whirring to life and spinning the rubber tracks.

  “You have to run!” Tom said urgently.

  Grace racked a round into her AR pistol and turned on the optic. “I am not leaving you. I’ve got this.”

  “You have no choice. We can’t outrun them. The track chair is not that fast.”

  “We can fight our way out of this. I can take out those guys before they even get close. I’ve shot drills like this my whole life.”

  Tom’s mouth tightened and his voice rose in urgency. “We’re in the middle of the football field! There’s no cover, Grace. This is not the place for a gunfight.”

  The approaching men spilled through the gate at the end of the field. They spread out and were running full-tilt. They could start shooting at any time and the fight would be on. Grace wanted to take the fight to them.

  “I can do it,” Grace pleaded. “Let me do it.”

  “Go! Get the hell out of here! Your family needs you. I can take care of myself. You getting captured too serves no purpose.”

  Grace screamed in frustration. Her mind raced. She had to be practical. She hated to admit it, but he was right. Free, she could try to help. She could try to break Tom loose. Captured, she would be useless.

  But what if they weren’t going to capture him? What if they were coming to rob and kill him? Thoughts came so fast she couldn’t process them, couldn’t think.

  She realized she had to leave. She had no idea what these people wanted but they had guns and they, or people like them, had fired on the chopper. She grabbed her gear bag and threw it over her shoulder. It was heavy and would slow her down but she needed it. She had to have her Go Bag, her weapons, and ammo.

  She stood and ran, then turned back to Tom. She opened her mouth as if to say something but she wasn’t sure what. She stood there with her mouth open, staring at him, and he looked back at her. They’d been through so much. Was this the end of it all?

  “I know. I know,” he said, feeling the same thing.

  Grace stood there frozen.

  Tom stared at her. “Would you get going?” he said, his voice gentler this time. “Please?”

  Grace closed the distance between her and Tom, throwing her arms around him, and kissing him on the cheek. She pulled back and stared into his eyes.

  “Take these and get going,” he said. He extended a small backpack toward her. “It’s my AK pistols.”

  She took the bag and slung it over the other shoulder. Voices were getting closer now. She ran as fast as she could, fully understanding now why her dad had insisted running be a regular part of her training. Not just any running, but running with packs, running with cinderblocks, running with sandbags, and even running with only one shoe. Saving your life would not always take place under ideal circumstances. It may be inconvenient and uncomfortable, and that’s exactly what it was now with the two large bags of gear banging against her.

  Grace ran without looking back, trying to put as much distance between her and the approaching horde as she could. She’d gone to this high school. She’d been on this field many times and she was familiar the terrain around it. Still, she didn’t know who was chasing her, and didn’t know if they knew the area as well.

  Tom watched her go, more concerned about her fate than his own. She flew through an opening in the fence and disappeared. He toggled the joystick and moved his chair to face the oncoming force. They had guns and yelled at him. He raised his hands over his head to present the least possible threat. His mind went back to his military training—what to do, what to say if you were captured.

  In seconds the group was surrounding him. Some stayed at his side, the rest were directed by the apparent leader to take off after Grace. For a moment Tom wished he had held onto his weapons and taken the whole group out. It wouldn’t have served any purpose though. He wasn’t on a suicide mission. He couldn’t outrun these men and engaging them in a firefight would have only gotten him killed. He would have to take his chances as a prisoner and hope Grace had some tricks up her sleeve.

  One of the group approached Tom with a pump action Mossberg 500. He kept the weapon trained on Tom while looking him up and down, examining the standing track chair. “What are you supposed to be? Some kind of transformer?”

  Tom had heard stuff like that before. He was unfazed. “My name is Tom Brady.”

  One of the other men in the group, red haired with a bushy beard and a bandana around his head guffawed. “Tom Brady? Like the football player?”

  Tom smiled. “Better.”

  Chapter Eight

  Damascus, VA

  Grace was running full-tilt when she cleared the fence around the football field and bounded over a steep embankment, dropping into the parking lot where the football players parked during practice. The parking lot was completely empty of cars, with only a rusty green trash dumpster in a far corner. She briefly considered diving into it and closing the lid behind her but it seemed too obvious. It would be the first potential hiding spot her pursuers would come upon and surely they would look in there.

  She pau
sed for a second. She could go left onto the gravel road that connected the small parking lot with a larger main parking lot or she could take to the woods. There was a trail there, a path students used when they were ditching school to smoke weed. This time of year the trail would be overgrown and perhaps even completely invisible if the people pursuing her didn’t know to look for it. She would go that way, into the concealment of the forest.

  The two bags were getting heavy and she had to adjust them when she started running again, the straps sawing into her shoulders. Had she known she was going to have to carry both bags for such a long distance she would have packed more carefully. She could do nothing about that now. She gritted her teeth, trying to keep the rattling bags as quiet as possible. She ran as if her life depended on it, since it quite possibly did.

  When she entered the woods, she cast a backward glance over her shoulder, looking for pursuers, and the move cost her. Her toe caught the gnarled roots of a poplar that rose up from the trail. Grace went flying, the bags tumbling, and she landed hard on her shoulder.

  Yet there was no time for falling, and no time for assessing damage. She stood mechanically, shouldered both bags, and took off running again. She could hear shouting in the parking lot behind her. Whoever the men were, they’d come that far. She had to assume that they would keep coming. She was not safe yet.

  Grace barreled down the trail, the heavy bags snagging on tree branches and causing her to bounce from side to side as if the forest itself was playing pinball with her. Since her fall, the difficulty of the trail was getting to her. She was sucking air, and being tired and winded would affect her judgment. If she didn’t calm down, she also wouldn’t be able to shoot worth a crap if the fight went that way. She had to hole up, even if it was only for a few minutes.

  Ahead, the mountain laurel began to thicken at the sides of the trail. The gnarled stalks of the tree wove itself in dense and nearly impenetrable clusters. It became difficult to see very far in any direction. It was exactly what she wanted. This was the spot she needed. She charged into the dense cluster of trees.

  Her first attempt at getting through the laurels was an illustration of the type of bad decisions people made when tired and frustrated. She tried to bully her way through, practically throwing her body against the limbs. It didn’t work. She rebounded with scratches on her forearms and stomach before stopping and taking a deep breath.

  You’ve got to slow down, she told herself. You’ve got to think.

  She pitched the bags ahead of her through an opening in the laurel, then climbed in after them. It was like she was working her way through a tangled spider web, the branches jumbled together in a haphazard and illogical manner. When she made a little progress she planned her next move, looking for a clear opening in the maze.

  When she could no longer see the trail and no longer hear the voices of her pursuers, she dropped the bags and backed up against the base of a tree. She worked to calm her breathing and slow her racing heart. Her mind kept going to Tom and what was going on with him. Was he safe? Had he been injured? What were they going to do with him?

  She allowed herself to wonder for a moment if he was already dead put she pushed the thought from her mind. She couldn’t let herself think that way.

  Grace shouldered the AR pistol and confirmed that the optic was ready to go. She checked the chamber and confirmed there was a round in the pipe. She pushed all thoughts out of her head except for processing the information her senses were feeding her. The pounding in her chest slowed as her breathing came under control. She listened.

  The disturbance she’d created coming into the woods had silenced the birds and squirrels. Every animal in this section of the forest had gone on alert, disturbed by her chaotic passage through the woods. In a moment, she picked up the distant sound of yelling. People were searching, looking for her. They shouted back and forth, looking for clues, trying to find where she had gone, but they could not. She could tell from listening to them that they were disorganized and were not trained in doing what they were trying to do. They didn’t know the signs to look for.

  She wanted to position herself to see them but was concerned about making any movement. If someone was standing out there listening as intently as she was, any sound might give her away. She had to be content to crouch in this cluster of laurel and try to be invisible. She didn’t know how long they would wait on her but logic told her it wouldn’t be long. With all that was going on in the world, why would they spend that much time looking for one girl whom they knew nothing about? It wasn’t like she was somebody valuable.

  Had they known she had a bag of weapons or that she could potentially lead them to her dad’s cache of survival resources, they may have pursued her further, but they had no way of knowing any of that. Surely they would give up the search and go away. To be certain, she would wait for at least an hour before she disentangled herself from the thicket. If she heard nothing then, she would make her move and get out of there.

  She knew exactly where she was and how to get home. There was no reason to rush. No reason to do anything stupid.

  Chapter Nine

  Damascus, VA

  The men who’d taken Tom were not responsive to his questions. Whenever he asked them anything about who they were, who they worked for, or where they were going he was met with silence and stares.

  “That thing better make it to the park,” one of the men said. “Because I’m not carrying you. If you can’t make it, we’ll tie you to a truck and drag your ass.”

  “I should be able to go ten miles,” Tom said.

  “That’ll get you there,” the other man said. “We’re not going far.”

  As he been trained to do in the military, Tom tried to observe as much as he could about the men who’d captured him. He guessed that none of them had a military background based on the way they handled their weapons. Even hunters would have been more familiar with weapon-handling than these men appeared to be. There was also nothing about them that gave any indication they were locals.

  With no other clues, he looked at their clothing. Both were wearing low-top hiking shoes that looked like Solomons or Merrells. What tags he could see indicated that most of their clothing was by companies like Kuhl, The North Face, and Mountain Hardwear. Even with the scraggly beards, the body odor, and the nasty T-shirts, these were people wearing expensive, high quality clothing that marked them as hikers. Grace said her hometown was on the Appalachian Trail, and that Damascus was known as the friendliest town on the trail.

  Tom’s captors led him off the football field and into the nearby parking lot. He spotted two Jeep Wranglers with the tops removed. That explained how the men got to the football field so quickly from the town park.

  “You’re gonna have to drive yourself, dude,” one of the captors said.

  Tom shrugged. “That’s fine. You guys can all take Jeeps as far as I’m concerned. Just tell me where to show up and I’ll meet you there in a little bit.”

  “Not a chance, asshole,” the man who appeared to be in charge said. “I’m putting two guys with you. Try any funny stuff and it won’t go well for you.”

  “What if he can outrun us on that thing?” a man named Mike asked.

  The leader looked at Tom and raised an eyebrow.

  “It only goes at walking speed,” Tom said

  “He could be lying,” Mike insisted.

  “I’m not lying about that,” Tom said “No matter how fast it goes, it clearly can’t outrun a bullet, right? If I tried to run off, wouldn’t you just shoot me?”

  “He’s got a point,” the leader said. He swung himself into the driver’s seat of the nearest Wrangler. “The rest of you guys load up.”

  The men clambered aboard the open vehicles. The two men that the leader designated to walk with Tom stood nearby with sour expressions. They were not excited about having to play escort to Tom. They frowned as the Jeeps roared off.

  “So where are we headed?” Tom asked.
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  A man named Jeremy gestured with his gun and the trio began walking. With no traffic visible in any direction, they stayed to the center of the main road, a divided two-lane state highway. They passed several houses and businesses. There were rental cabins and bicycle shops, a couple of factories. Unlike many of the places Tom had passed in his travels over the past few weeks, this area appeared abandoned. There were no people sitting on the porches of the dark houses, no armed men guarding their businesses.

  “Where is everyone?” Tom asked. “This is the quietest spot I’ve seen in days.”

  Mike shrugged “Everyone left.”

  “Watch with the mouth,” Jeremy spat. “No one said you could be giving away information.”

  Mike gestured around him. “What?” he asked. “That some kind of state secret? I’m stating the obvious.”

  “You know how they are,” Jeremy said. “They’re funny about things.”

  “I’m funny about things too,” Mike said. “I’m funny about being told what to do. I’m funny about being made to walk when other people are riding. I didn’t sign up to be on the second string of somebody’s team. I didn’t sign up to do all the shit work in some dinky town where I don’t want to be.”

  Tom listened eagerly. Anytime there was dissent in the ranks there was an opportunity to pick up information. Those dissatisfied with the status quo were always inclined to share a little more information than they were supposed to. It was a way of getting back at the people in charge, a way of getting a little satisfaction to soothe their own personal aggravation.

  “I’d just be careful what I said.”

  “You going to rat me out?”

  Jeremy didn’t answer.

  “So why did everyone leave?” Tom asked.

  “It’s a small town,” Mike said. “There weren’t many people living in town to begin with. Most of the people around here live outside of town. The town itself only had a couple of hundred people.”

  “So why did they all leave?” Tom asked again. “It’s not a good time to be traveling the roads. Most people I’ve seen are sticking close to home. Even without food and power, they’re going to be a little more comfortable there than they are out on the road.”